


Well-Behaved Women

by ehmazing



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: F/F, F/M, Female Friendship, Government, Lesbian Character, POV Minor Character, Post-Canon, Secret Relationship, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-07-11 18:53:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 39,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15978359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ehmazing/pseuds/ehmazing
Summary: If she'd known she'd be entangled in so much politics, dog hair, and personal business, maybe Sheska would not have become the First Lady's personal assistant.





	1. Sphinx

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Izilen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izilen/gifts).



> Without Izzy, truly I would never have put so much effort into researching the Weimar Republic, terrible 1920s wedding headbands, and the shedding patterns of Shibu Inus. Love you <333

Sheska only applied because she thought there was no chance in hell she’d actually get the job.

The disbelief clung to her even after she'd picked up the acceptance phone call, signed the contract, and passed through the security check behind the front door of #5 Cherrywood Street. It wasn’t until the guard gave her the badge— _JANOVICH, SHESKA: CLEARANCE 5_ typed in bold, neat letters—that reality washed over her, cold and brisk as an ocean wave.

“The First Lady’s new assistant, right?” Her hand was quickly shaken by a short man with messy hair, his own badge labelling him _DONOVAN, HARRY._ “I’m with the Prime Minister’s team, so we’ll be seeing a lot of each other. Main office is on the fourth floor, but today you’re starting on the fifth. Sorry about the stairs; both lifts broke yesterday and we’re still waiting on the mechanic.”

The stairs creaked underfoot as Sheska followed him, straining to hear the introductions being made as a dozen people darted around them, jogging up and down with papers stacked in their hands, files clenched between their teeth.

“That’s Eileen from Foreign Affairs—Garret from Intelligence—Colonel Channing’s with Western Command but he’ll sometimes send Lieutenant Helms in his place. You can call me Harry,” her guide explained as he took the stairs two at a time. “All personnel from Parliament go by first names, Military Command by last names and rank. You familiar with military ranks?”

“I used to work for the court-martial office,” Sheska managed to say between panting. “I know the chain of command.”

“Another defector? Welcome aboard!” Harry flashed her a quick smile over his shoulder. “Command thinks we’re too informal here, but we had five Steins in the Treasury and no ranks to tell them apart. Just remember, the Prime Minister ultimately answers to Grumman, but we don't. Never say yes to anyone in uniform if the PM hasn't approved, even if the old brass try to bully you.” He shook his head. “Those old codgers think this is still an autocracy.”

By the time they reached the landing of the fifth floor, Sheska regretted that she’d chosen a pair of heels instead of her usual weathered loafers. She’d have to buy a nicer pair as soon as possible, she thought, as Harry flashed his badge to the guard posted at the end of the hall and gestured for her to do the same. As they passed from the hardwood floors onto neat carpet, he fished a blue notebook out of his pocket and flipped through it, squinting down at the pages.

“According to her agenda, you’re to go straight to the Green Room. When you’re dismissed, come find me on the fourth floor and I’ll introduce you to the rest of the team. The layout of the place is pretty simple—it all used to be flats. But Clearance 5 gives you access to everything but the library, so don’t worry about being in the wrong place if you get lost.”

Sheska wondered if that was supposed to be reassuring. But she didn’t have time to ask for further directions, as Harry knocked on the door at the very end of the hall, flashed his badge again to the guard who opened it, and pushed Sheska inside before she could blink.

“Oh, and one last thing,” Harry said, catching the closing door with his hand. “Call her ‘ma’am.’ Not ‘Madame’ or ‘First Lady’—that’s just a popular title, and you can say it around us but she’ll tell you off if she hears you—and definitely not ‘Mrs. Mustang,’ or people will think you mean his mother. Got it?”

“Yes,” Sheska said, “but—”

The door shut. Save for the guard, she was alone.

Or thought she was, until three dogs came bounding over, barking excitedly. Sheska clutched her briefcase awkwardly under one elbow as she put out her hands, trying to calm them with little success. The guard was as helpful and still as a statue.

 _“Down,”_ came a firm voice.

The dogs dropped to their bellies without hesitation. Another pair of heels thudded softly over the carpet as Sheska straightened up, tugging her skirt over her knees. She felt suddenly light-headed, unsure whether from nerves or racing up the stairs, as Riza Hawkeye walked into the room.

 

* * *

 

Sheska worked for the military for years, but she had never mastered the art of the soldier’s stance. She used to watch the women in the court-martial office walk, fascinated by the way their heads sailed through the air, their perfectly-matched footsteps looking graceful even in clunky rubber-soled boots. The men could look impressive, but the women looked unstoppable, untouchable. They had always filled Sheska with an equal sense of yearning and awe.

The stance that eluded Sheska seemed built into Riza’s very spine. They were nearly the same height, yet Sheska felt two feet tall.

“Sorry about that.” Riza snapped her fingers and the dogs trotted back to her side, tails wagging. “They’re still puppies, really, and can’t get enough of new people. You’re not allergic, are you?”

“No, Mrs—no, ma’am.” Sheska swallowed, hoping her voice wouldn’t crack. “Um, I’m Sheska Janovich. I’m your new personal assistant.”

“Yes, I know.” Riza smiled, amused. “I did hire you.”

“O-Oh. Yes, of course, um—” Sheska clutched the handle of her briefcase tightly, stuttering, “—that would make, uh, sense. You just, uh, weren’t at my interview, and I didn’t know if you would remember me from the court-martial office, since it was so long ago.”

“Of course I remember. You worked under the late Brigadier General Hughes. He always spoke very highly of you. Oh—I’m sorry, you must be winded from the stairs. Please, have a seat.” Riza gestured to one of the several armchairs arranged in a half circle, upholstered in a pale green fabric. Sheska set her briefcase down and wiped her palms on her skirt as she sat down. The white dog walked over and sniffed her shoes. “It’s still early enough for tea, I think. Or do you prefer coffee?”

“Thank you, tea is fine.” Sheska tried to maintain good posture as she sank into the armchair. She gave the white dog’s head a pat while Riza disappeared around the corner and returned with a tea tray, arranging everything on the low table between them.

“Lou,” she called, and the guard raised his head for the first time since Sheska entered. “Tea?”

“No, ma’am,” he replied, “but thank you, ma’am.” With a sniff, he became a statue again.

“So,” Riza began, pouring two cups, “I heard Harry’s voice as you came in, so I suppose he gave you the break-neck tour. He used to work in radio, which is why he talks so fast. Dana and Nicholas—the Prime Minister’s other assistants—aren’t as jumpy. Did you meet any of guards?”

“Er, no, ma’am.” Sheska accepted her cup and the pitcher of cream. “I just came straight up.”

“Well, that’s Lou.” Riza nodded to the guard at the door. “He’s my personal guard. I have to have one indoors and two out; the other is Sam. The Prime Minister has four at all times. They have to see your badge whenever you use this floor, since our flat is the highest security clearance in this building. It may seem silly once you’ve been coming and going, but that’s protocol.”

“This is really your flat?” Sheska looked around the room. It was simply decorated, with only an old mantle clock, a framed watercolor landscape, and a potted fern marking any personal touches. “I thought the PM was supposed to live in that fancy house on the west side, near the House of Parliament.”

“We were offered that house, but we declined. We bought out the bottom four flats of this building during the election campaign and kept the top floor for ourselves. The staff was already settled. It was easier to move new people in than move the old staff out.” Riza tapped a glob of honey off her spoon.

They sipped their tea. A telephone rang somewhere down the hall, and the dogs’ head perked up when footsteps thundered in pursuit of it. Sheska stole glances at the First Lady—well, _not_ the First Lady—over the rim of her teacup. She remembered Riza when she was First Lieutenant Hawkeye. Sheska had crossed paths more often with then-Colonel Mustang, but it was unusual to see him without her. Thinking back, she couldn’t remember if they had ever held more than an idle conversation while the Lieutenant waited for documents to be delivered from Archives, but surely Sheska must have done something to impress the woman enough to warrant a job offer so many years later. She just had no earthly idea what it could have been.

Though Riza was of the same generation, Sheska felt there was a lifetime of difference between the two of them. Today she’d worn her best, most serious suit and wrestled with her hair for half an hour before it managed to behave. Riza was in only a silver-grey skirt and matching blouse, her short hair swept to one side with a single pin, and yet appeared so elegant that Sheska felt like a kid playing dress-up. Regarding their careers, Riza had resigned her commission with several commendations and two national awards for her service when she’d married two years ago. Sheska had been unceremoniously laid off when the court-martial office received the final copies of their lost records from the First Branch, fresh from her desk.

“I asked to meet with you before you started.” Sheska jumped a little when Riza spoke, jolting her out of her thoughts. “I wanted to discuss the particulars of your position. Have you ever been a personal assistant before, Sheska?”

“No, ma’am.” Sheska deflated. “I did say so in my interview.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not judging you; I’ve never _had_ a personal assistant before.” Riza scratched the head of the dog with the black coat. “I was one myself for well over a decade. It’s demanding work.” She set her empty teacup back on the tray. “Please answer honestly: are you sure you’re ready for it?”

“Well, I’ve never been an assistant, but I’m a fast learner. I remember everything that I read.” Sheska cleared her throat, trying to sit up straighter. “I read about Mr. Mustang’s policies for the whole election year, and I’ve kept up with the news since he’s been in office. I know how busy anyone in government is. And since the Fuhrer’s reforms, I think it's more important than ever to continue strengthening Parliament. I’m not afraid of how hard it will be. I’m ready to help.”

“That’s good,” Riza said. “I don’t think you can be anyone’s assistant unless you really believe in helping them do what they do. But I want to make something clear: I’m not in the government. There’s no official role for a Prime Minister’s spouse other than to marry them. There’s been a bit of confusion, really, about what I’m supposed to do. The Fuhrer isn’t married, so there’s no real First Lady at Command. Though most people mistake me for the replacement, it’s a conflict of interest for someone connected to Parliament to serve another role for the military. Yet I’ve no real say in what Parliament does either. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” said Sheska slowly. “You’re floating in between Parliament and Command, but they want you to represent both and neither at the same time.”

“Well-said.” Riza sighed. “But above all, I have to represent the Prime Minister without actually standing in for the Prime Minister. Most of what I can accomplish for our government revolves around planning parties, dinners, and charity events.” Riza folded her arms, looking at Sheska with one eyebrow raised. “That’s the kind of help I need, Sheska: managing four more years of round-the-clock social calls. I wanted to give you fair warning. Still interested?”

Sheska thought it over. For all the tedium of copying files for eight hours a day, five days a week, she’d liked the court-martial office. She liked the bustle at oh-eight-hundred when the soldiers came in, regular as clockwork, the smell of coffee drifting from the mess hall. She liked the way each day’s requests were different, a folder needed on an AWOL war vet, a file long-buried in a cold case suddenly vital. She liked using the heavy stamp on Colonel Focker’s desk to mark a case “CLOSED,” another mystery solved, another file in order, mission accomplished. She liked that the vibrant, friendly commotion inside the Prime Minister’s office reminded her of it all.

She liked that Riza Hawkeye remembered she worked for Brigadier General Hughes. She liked Riza Hawkeye.

“Yes, ma’am,” Sheska said. “I really am.”

 

* * *

 

Her desk was mahogany, tucked against the west corner of the office. _The_ office, they called it, not to be mixed up with the others beneath the fourth floor. The office took up nearly the entire floor itself; the edges of the walls of the former flats could still be seen where they met the ceiling. At least twenty desks had been squeezed in, and at least thirty telephones, their tangles of wires tacked against the walls. The bulk of them rested on the desk of Kain Fuery, the head of Communications, and those were not to be touched under any circumstances.

Sheska had her own telephone, her own lamp, and a brown leather desk blotter and inbox tray. The first thing Harry did after showing her the space was warn her that she would hardly ever use it.

“See Nicholas’ desk over there, by that filing cabinet? As empty as the day he moved in. He’s the PM’s main assistant. Dana is number two, and I’m number three. Nicholas is at Mustang’s side sixteen hours a day, so his main desk is a clipboard. You might want to consider one too, since you’re the only assignment for the First Lady. She’s usually on her feet.”

Harry opened the first desk drawer to reveal a stack of black, blue, and red notebooks identical to the one he’d pulled out of his pocket earlier.

“The daily agendas,” he said. “These are your lifeblood. Each one has two weeks’ schedules in them: black for the PM, blue for the First Lady. You’ll need both every day because even if they don’t have any events together, she wants to know everything that's going on. If there are any changes in her plans, you need to mark it in the red agenda and then send it to Communications, who sends it to Security, who updates everyone else's."

Sheska flipped through the notebooks while Harry explained. The red agenda was a long list of names and times of the daily comings and goings expected at #5 Cherrywood Street. The blue was marked out in blocks of hours. The black was marked in increments down to the minute. Just looking through one day of Roy Mustang’s life made her want to go home and take a nap.

“Who makes these?” Sheska asked, her mind reeling at the task of sorting so much information—and judging by the number of notebooks, sorting it all at least three months in advance.

“Maria Ross. She’s head of security. Controls all of the guards, schedules, transport, everything. Some people say her head can spin all the way around like an owl’s.” Harry grinned. “Don’t say that to her face, though.”

“Are you trying to scare off another one, Harry?” A middle-aged woman bustled into the office, dropping a large pile of files onto a desk crowded with framed photos. “Don’t listen to anything he says.” She held out a hand to Sheska, her short fingernails painted bright pink. “Dana Kugel. You’re the assistant for the First Lady, right? Thank god. I was traded back and forth between the two Mustangs while the job hunt was going on, and I couldn’t be happier that that’s over.”

“She accidentally put the PM in the car headed to the Amestrian Union Ladies’ Club luncheon instead of the House of Parliament,” Harry explained. “Security completely lost track of him. We all nearly had a heart attack until he called from the country club. Said he’d rather stay with the old widows.” Dana swatted him. “What?! You did him a favor!”

They took Sheska around the rest of the fourth floor, then the lower three. She was introduced to at least two dozen new people; usually as soon as they started talking, a phone rang or a coworker called and they flitted away. Dana left them on the second floor when a major spotted her, her face hardening as she began refusing him some meeting or another. When they reached the first floor Harry took her back up the stairs—twice as painful as the first time—and started her again at the fourth.

“So this is how your days will usually go. The First Lady wakes up at oh-six-hundred and your shift starts at oh-six-thirty. Once you pass through security, you’ll meet her on the fifth floor in the Dining Room—big, blue, only room they have with a real table—where you’ll go through her daily schedule with her. On the days that she has morning guests, you can work in the office until oh-ten-hundred and then meet her upstairs. If she has downtime, sometimes she’ll dismiss you and call your desk if she needs you again. But most of the time she’ll want you with her regardless. She hates to be idle.

“When she goes out, that’s where the agendas come in.” Harry tapped the cover of a blue one. “It’s important that everything she does runs on schedule. Even the driving times are factored in here. If there’s a major delay, you need to get to the nearest phone and contact Kain Fuery’s team. If things are starting to drag on at her events, just lean in and whisper, ‘We need to be on our way, ma’am,’ and get her moving. But that should rarely be a problem.” Harry rolled his eyes. “Mustang, on the other hand, loves to push the clock.”

"I’ll take the agendas home, then,” Sheska said, “if she wants to be filled in first thing in the morning.”

“No. Absolutely not.” Harry’s casual tone suddenly turned darkly serious. “These are only given to ten people in the entire country: the bodyguards, the PM’s assistants, and you. If any of these were dropped somewhere, any terrorist worth their salt would have a cut-and-dry assassination.” He pointed to the badge on his chest, twin to Sheska’s. “Clearance 5 isn’t a number, Sheska. It means you’re one of a handful of staff that are ever allowed on the fifth floor. In their flat. Remember that.”

“A-Alright.” The dizzy feeling Sheska had when she first entered the Green Room was back with a vengeance. Harry softened a little, reaching up to put a hand on her shoulder.

“I know it’s a little crazy here, even if you were used to Central Command,” he said. “But since Grumman reinstated the premier office, all security on Members of Parliament has been tight, especially for the PM.” He leaned in as if sharing a secret. “The attack of ‘15 left a deep impression. We don’t want to lose another family, like the Bradleys.”

As the office began emptying for lunch, Sheska was at last left alone at her new desk. She unpacked her briefcase, setting out the few things she’d brought: her favorite pen and a few ink bottles, a little glass figurine of a turtle, a portrait of her mother and father giggling over a bottle of champagne on their wedding day. Someone had been kind enough to leave a map of the lower floor offices beside the telephone. Sheska looked it over, then closed her eyes.

The test: she flipped the map over, dipped her pen in the inkwell, and drew a copy from memory on a spare piece of paper. When finished, she turned the original back over and laid them side-by-side. They matched perfectly.

She took out the stacks of agendas from her desk drawer, opened the blue one, and began to read.

 

* * *

 

The alarm rang at oh-five-hundred. Sheska stuffed her feet into her new loafers, yawning as she wrangled the knots out of her hair. Short styles were the height of fashion now, but she feared that changing hers would make it puff up beyond saving. She pinned back the biggest curls and pinched some color into her cheeks, cleaning her glasses under the tap.

When she pushed them onto her nose, she thought suddenly and unexpectedly of Maisie. Maisie used to fix her hair for her every morning and kiss the bridge of her nose before she could slide her glasses on.

Sheska frowned and shook her head, slapping her cheeks harder. She would _not_ think about Maisie. Maisie didn't deserve to be on her mind, and certainly not before coffee.

The tram ride was uneventful. The guard at the front door nodded at her badge and opened it for her, touching the brim of his hat with one hat.

“G’morning, Stan!”

“G’morning, Sheska.”

In contrast to the bare streets of Central, still sleeping, #5 Cherrywood Street was wide awake. Typewriters were already clacking in the distance as Sheska joined the queue at the security check, yawning as everyone shuffled slowly forward. Sheska handed her briefcase to the guard, who combed through it quickly. She was about to take it back when the front door suddenly slammed, running footsteps pounding through the room.

“Excuse me!”

Sheska was shoved to the side. She managed to catch her balance before toppling over, the clerk behind her kindly supporting her elbow. She looked up in time to see a dark-haired man dash through security, his olive green coat sailing behind him.

“Hey!” Sheska snatched back her briefcase, angrily picking up speed to catch the man before he reached the lift. She elbowed her way through the stream of staff, following the flash of green wool. _“Hey!_ What was that for?!”

Those waiting at the first lift began to file inside, but the man went to the second and pressed the down button. With no line there, the doors opened right away. Just as he stepped inside, Sheska caught up, and without thinking she barreled into the lift behind him.

The man turned around—no. She was a woman. Short-haired, broad-shouldered, and very good-looking.

The lift doors closed.

“Uh—” Whatever rage that fueled Sheska to give chase had given up the ghost. In the polished interior of the lift she could see her hat was askew, her glasses fogged up from her short sprint. She could feel the blood rushing to her face. “Uh, hey, you um—”

“I’m so sorry about that.” The woman dug out a heavy pocketwatch from her coat, flipping the brass lid to check the time. “My engine’s busted, so I’m running a bit late. I hope you didn’t fall?”

“N-no,” Sheska answered. “I didn’t.”

"Oh, good! I promise, it won't happen again." The woman put her watch away and met Sheska’s eyes. Her own were dark and framed by long lashes. A mole crowned the peak of her left cheekbone. She was wearing a suit and trousers beneath her coat, and the polish on her loafers put Sheska’s new pair to shame.

The woman stepped closer. Sheska tensed, gripping her briefcase to her chest. The woman raised one arm, and Sheska suddenly thought she was going to be pinned to the wall.

The woman pointed behind her to the lift buttons. “Do you mind? Basement level.”

“Oh— _oh.”_ Sheska whirled around and punched the button. The lift lurched as it began descending. “Geez, I didn’t think—I’m sorry, I’m not even going down, I guess I just—”

“Don’t apologize,” the woman said, bemused. “I’m the one who pushed you.” She held out a hand. “You’re Sheska, right? Assistant to the First Lady?”

“Yes.” Her hand was warm and calloused. Sheska hoped hers wasn’t too clammy. “I started last month.”

“I’ll have to give you a codename,” the woman mused, looking her over. Sheska’s face felt hotter than ever. “Do you have any nicknames? Or schoolyard taunts you’d like to avoid?”

“I don’t think so?”

The woman nodded as the lift doors chimed again, opening to reveal a guard posted at a plain wooden door labelled _RESTRICTED ACCESS._ She stepped out, turning to Sheska once more as she shrugged off her coat. Pinned to her vest was a Clearance 5 badge proclaiming it belonged to _ROSS, MARIA._

“Sorry again, Sheska. And welcome to the team!”

Maria Ross was even handsomer when she smiled, and the only working part left in Sheska’s brain hissed that she should smile back. But then the lift doors closed, and she was left looking at her own red-faced, puffy-haired reflection.

She leaned her head against the cold metal wall and groaned.

 

* * *

 

When she arrived at the fifth floor she’d managed to clean up a little. She patted herself down before the door to the Dining Room. She had her agendas tucked against her clipboard—check—her wristwatch set and wound—check—and a pencil sharpener and spare eraser in her skirt pocket—check. She knocked, her badge out and ready when Lou answered the door.

“G’morning, Lou,” she said. The guard grunted back. So far, Sheska had only heard him give full answers to the First Lady; at least an audible response was progress. She stepped inside to the usual chorus of barking and prepared for the flurry of dog fur that always erupted when she came to breakfast.

But the dogs raced right past her, Thunder and Lightning in hot pursuit of a red rubber ball bouncing into the corner. Cyclone was running unhelpful circles around both of them in between chasing her own tail. Black Hayate, gray-muzzled and less prone to such antics, merely watched from a cushion where he held court. Once captured between Thunder’s teeth, the ball was raced back across the room and delivered into the waiting palm of the Prime Minister.

Who was still in his pajamas and dressing gown.

“Oh!” Sheska averted her gaze to the ceiling. “Sir! I didn’t know you weren't ready! I’ll go back to the fourth floor, I can come back—“

“Don’t get flustered on his account.” At the other end of the table, Riza lowered her newspaper. She was already in day clothes. Sheska still had no idea how she got ready in under half an hour every morning. “Perhaps if enough people walk in scandalized, he’ll actually grow some shame.”

“Do you know the earliest time the House of Parliament meets?” The Prime Minister tossed the ball to the dogs again and took a bite of a heavily-buttered piece of toast in his other hand. “Eleven-hundred hours, sometimes noon! One hundred and seventy-nine other MPs are still snoring somewhere else in this city, so I have every right to walk around in my slippers before dawn.” He smiled at Sheska. “Not to worry, Sheska, Nicholas has seen me looking far worse.”

A quiet, “Indeed, sir,” behind her made Sheska jump. Though Sheska was his counterpart in role, Nicholas was the staffer she’d encountered the least in the office. He reminded her a bit of the long-necked pigeons her mother used to feed in the hospital yard. His hair was shot through with three shades of gray and tufted up at the back of his neck like ruffled feathers. He had a gift for being able to stand stock-still at the Prime Minister’s side for hours and then take off at a dead run in an instant. Some of the staffers estimated Nicholas was at least sixty; others insisted that with the way he never tired, he had to be twenty and disguised as an old man.

“My apologies, Miss Janovich.” Regardless of the office convention, Nicholas never used anyone’s first name. His clipboard was held at the ready even though the Prime Minister was still tossing the ball to the dogs. “I thought you saw me when you came in.”

“It’s alright, Nicholas.” Sheska took her place beside him and tried to put the whole strange morning behind her. She nodded to Riza. “When you’re ready, ma’am.”

Riza set the paper aside and took a piece of toast herself before saying, “Go ahead.”

It was to be a regular day. Riza typically received phone calls in the morning, had lunch with some organization or another, took care of her correspondence and planning in the afternoon, and dined either with the Prime Minister or various guests in the evening. Sheska would be dismissed to tend to her own duties around seventeen-hundred hours, during which she prepared for the next day at her desk. 

“Today you have one meeting outside the usual time frame, ma’am,” Sheska added after reading aloud the morning’s events, “with a Mrs. Vivian Oglinski, at fourteen-hundred hours.”

Every head in the room turned—even Lou’s—when Riza swore.

“I forgot that was today,” she grumbled. The Prime Minister began laughing. “I thought I had more time.”

“She comes the first Monday of every month, and she’s been coming for eleven months,” the Prime Minister said with a smirk. “You’ve forgotten the appointment eleven times, then?”

His wife glared at him over her toast. “That means she meets with _you_  tomorrow. Have you thought of a way to explain that union speech yet?”

The Prime Minister’s smirk dimmed slightly. “At least I'm not a ‘difficult case.’”

“At least I'm not a ‘budding anti-capital rabblerouser.’”

The phone near the china cabinet rang once over their bickering. Nicholas darted over to answer it.

“Xingese embassy,” he said. “Wong for you, sir.”

The Prime Minister sighed and stretched in his chair before rising. “Alright, alright. I’ll take it in the library. Sheska, good luck with my wife today.” He pointed to Riza over his shoulder as he made for the side door. Black Hayate yawned and got to his feet, collar jingling as he trotted away at Mustang’s heels, his guards and Nicholas not far behind. “Make sure she plays nice.”

The usual morning quiet finally had room to spread. The other dogs, sensing the loss of their playmate, brought the ball to Riza’s feet instead and whined.

 _“Difficult case,”_ Riza huffed, looking at the door darkly. “That’ll be his epitaph.” She picked up the ball and set it on the table, pushing her plate aside. “Well then, Sheska, we’d better get to work.”

 

* * *

 

Mrs. Oglinski, it turned out, was not a dignitary or a charity president, but a publicist.

Sheska was sent to pick her up from security and take her to meet Riza on the second floor, where most of the office meetings were held. Many staffers took smoke breaks a few times a day, but Mrs. Oglinski smelled like this meeting was her break from smoking. She shook Sheska’s hand with a grip that made her wonder if Oglinski was the distant branch of the Armstrong line.

“Well, ma’am, things could be worse,” Mrs. Oglinski growled. “But they could certainly be better.” She pulled out an armful of magazines from her massive handbag and slapped them onto the table. “You’ve moved up a temperature notch: last month you were ‘frigid’ and this month only ‘icy.’ If we get to ‘lukewarm’ the champagne’s on me.”

“Hello, Vivian,” said Riza drily, leafing through one of tabloids. “Nice to see you too.”

Mrs. Oglinski heaved herself into a chair, tossing her hat aside. Sheska just managed to catch it before it hit the ground. “Pleasure, ma'am. It’s almost our anniversary, so could you remind me, please, of the cardinal rules?”

“Smile.” Riza did not demonstrate. “Walk side-by-side. And whenever possible, hold his hand or arm.”

“Whose hand?”

“My husband’s.”

“Whose?”

Riza sighed. “Roy’s.”

 _“Like pulling teeth,”_ Mrs. Oglinski grunted. She stabbed her finger at the volume on the top of the stack, issued last week. “And how many of those things are you doing on this cover?”

Sheska and Riza leaned forward to look. The Prime Minister and First Lady had been photographed as they walked out of a restaurant with MP Norris and her husband. The Prime Minister looked normal, Sheska supposed, or as normal as Roy Mustang usually did. She used to tease her mother by asking which she was more fond of, his face or his policies. The First Lady was nicely dressed, as always, and while she looked serious, Sheska didn’t think she looked ‘icy.’ However, at a great distance behind her husband, she didn’t much look like his wife.

 _DINNER AND NO DESSERT FOR PM,_ the tagline agreed.

“You know,” Riza said, “I really do admire them for their creativity with those headlines.”

Mrs. Oglinski leaned back, the chair groaning in protest. “Ma’am,” she said, “you’re not impossible. You’re good-looking, you’ve never done anything stupid, and you can be charming as a cherub on the rare occasions you actually speak. Hell, I used to work for Clarisse Knight—you know Clarisse Knight?” She turned on Sheska, who nodded nervously. “You know that her early opera career was funded by at least four different sugar daddies in the South City brass?”

“Um, I definitely didn’t.”

“Damn right you didn’t, because in seven months I turned Clarisse Knight from a dumped diva into the most wholesome soprano to ever grace the stage. And she was a downright, tried-and-true, dyed-in-the-wool bitch.” Mrs. Oglinski refocused on Riza. “But you know why Clarisse Knight only needed seven months?”

Riza looked, for the first time, a little cowed.

“Because,” Mrs. Oglinski said, her eyes narrowed, “she took the time to _practice.”_

“Vivian, we only get a few hours alone together at most,” Riza protested. “The only time we don’t have guards around is when we go to sleep. And there’s always Nicholas, or Dana, or Harry, and now Sheska—”

“Sheska,” Mrs. Oglinski interrupted, “would you run for the hills if you saw the PM and his wife stand less than two feet apart?”

“…No?”

“There you are!” Mrs. Oglinski threw up her hands. “The wonders of a professional staff!”

Pushing the pile of tabloids aside, she wrestled a slip of paper out of her handbag and passed it to Riza.

“Practice,” she ordered. “The First Term Gala is six months away. That’s a list of events you need to be seen at before then, and where you need to be seen smiling wider than a trophy wife at her husband's funeral. Handcuff yourself to him, for all I care, but I better not see another in-line formation like this again. Sheska’s a grown woman, and who knows what old Nick has done in his day? You pay them too well for them to turn up their noses at a little PDA, so have a little PDA! Above all, remember you have to—”

“Practice.” Riza folded the paper in half and Sheska took it to slip onto her clipboard. “I know. Thank you for your time, Vivian.”

Mrs. Oglinksi shook her head in the lift as Sheska escorted her back to the first floor.

“Most difficult case I’ve ever had.” She blew her nose into a lace-trimmed handkerchief. “You married, Sheska?”

Sheska swallowed. “No,” she answered.

“Good,” Mrs. Oglinski sniffed. “If you ever make the mistake of doing so, make sure he’s not a politician.”

Sheska wondered what her life would be like if she had to have four burly, black-suited men watch from the door as she ate breakfast every morning.

“Noted,” she said.

 

* * *

 

It was unfair that she kept dreaming about Maisie. It was unfair that she dreamed at all, considering she slumped home at twenty-one-hundred hours, six days a week, and fell asleep at once like an old woman. When she saw Nicholas race around in the mornings it was hard to keep from hating him.

She’d purged all of Maisie’s leftover things three weeks after the breakup. Not that she’d left much behind, but Sheska managed to dig out an old cardigan from the closet, a few letters, and some pictures she’d missed during her tearful rampage the first day after. Still, Sheska felt like she’d missed something when she woke up in the mornings and found the space beside her cold. Maisie lingered in her coffee mugs and on the bathroom mat and in the jar of loose change on the dresser. She was an itch on the part of your back you couldn’t reach that slowly drove you mad.

“It’s my first press event today, Mom,” Sheska told the photograph hanging next to the mirror as she fastened her necklace and straightened her jacket. It had been taken of the two of them at Sheska’s primary school graduation. It hung next to her father’s academy portrait, his second lieutenant’s stars gleaming in the camera flash. Sheska touched two fingers to the frame of each. “The PM keeps changing his speech and making everyone nervous, so maybe he needs more luck than I do.”

She waited with Riza—who was armored in an immaculate hat and dusky brown coat—by the first of the line of cars idling on the street outside of #5 Cherrywood. Sam stood at Riza’s side while Lou waited at the second car with three of the Prime Minister's guards. The fourth was still somewhere inside with him and Nicholas, who would share the final car with Sheska. She was starting to get the jokes Harry always made about hiring army wagons instead of Parliament’s small luxury cabs.

Finally, at the stroke of nine, the guards snapped to attention as the Prime Minister came out, taking his hat from Nicholas as he strode to the first car.

“Are we ready?” he said, smiling and nodding to the two women.

“We’ve been ready for ten minutes now,” Riza snarled. She was hunched into her coat, arms crossed. Sheska was alarmed. It was quite normal for the First Lady to rib, needle, and even scold her husband, but not so normal for her to snap at him.

The Prime Minister, however, acted as if nothing was amiss. “Fuery held me up,” he explained, still jovial. “A call came in from Thessakona, but it’s all taken care of now. Nicholas, Sheska, we’ll see you at the hospital.”

His fourth guard opened the side door for the pair. As she walked away, Sheska saw that ever-so-briefly, the Prime Minister’s hand rested on his wife’s back as she slid inside.

“What was that about?” she whispered to Nicholas as they approached the third car.

“The missus doesn’t like crowds.” Nicholas didn’t seem unsettled by Riza’s behavior either, but then again, the day he was unsettled by anything might mean the end of the world. “These sort of events try her nerves; it was the same on the campaign trail. She’ll be fine once the Prime Minister's speech is finished.”

Of course Sheska fretted. “Is there anything I can do for her?” she pushed. “Anything that helps?”

“Yes.” Nicholas opened the car door with one of his long arms, looking at her sternly. “Don’t bother her, and don’t bring it up again.”

 _Stuffy old man,_ Sheska thought as she clambered into the car. _Thinks that all women can do is fuss!_ She set her clipboard down and repinned her hat, determined to spend the short trip in righteous and angry silence.

“Orchard, this is Carriage Three. We have Specs and Shadow with us, we are go. Sandstorm and Sphinx on the move, over.”

_“Copy that, Carriage Three. Over.”_

The voice and responding radio crackle came from the driver’s seat. Sheska looked into the rearview mirror and met a pair of dark eyes.

“Hey, Sheska!” Maria Ross’ hand worked the gearshift, and soon they were pulling behind the other two vehicles, turning onto Ninth Avenue. “Is this your first press event?”

“H-hi.” Sheska willed herself to sound confident, even though her gut was twisting more than ever. “It is.”

“You never forget your first.” Maria’s tone was teasingly wistful. “Lots of yelling, inevitably horrible weather, flashbulbs in your face. You never know how bright they really are until you’re facing down twenty at once.”

“Well, I can’t get much more blind than this,” Sheska said, adjusting her glasses. Maria’s eyes creased at the corners. If it was a smile, the day might yet turn out well. “What was your first press event?”

“Mustang’s swearing-in ceremony.” They passed Rollings Park, the trees still bare but starting to bud. “All hundred and eighty MPs, all Central soldiers and assorted brass, and about five thousand civilians crammed around the parade grounds. I warned him that if he’s re-elected, I’m turning in my notice.”

Just the thought of planning the swearing-in—which had blocked all traffic in Central for two days—made Sheska shudder. “I can’t imagine,” she said. Maria hummed softly. Sheska looked at her once or twice more as they drove through the capital, but Maria's eyes stayed on the road.

_“Carriage Two, Carriage Three, this is Carriage One. Sandstorm and Sphinx delivered. Awaiting your deliveries, over.”_

“Copy that, over.”

Maria slowed to pull the car through the back gate of the Children’s Hospital. Leaning forward, Sheska could see the other two cars ahead of them, the first already parked.

“Which one is which?” she asked, pointing to the radio. “The codenames, I mean.”

“Mustang is ‘Sandstorm.’ It’s a bit of an inside joke; on the way to sign the treaty in Jingshi to build the Eastern Continental Railroad, his caravan got stuck in one.”

“Were you stuck with him?”

“No.” Maria chuckled. “I had to dig him out.”

“Then ‘Sphinx’ is the First Lady?”

“That’s right.”

Sheska bit her lip. “I’m afraid, uh, I don’t actually know what a sphinx is.”

The car stopped. Maria delivered a curt message through the radio announcing their arrival and nodded to the fourth guard. He stepped out to join the others surrounding the Mustangs. A few photographers had already gathered at the hospital gate, their black cameras hovering like fat flies. Nicholas slipped out on his own side.

“It’s a creature in Xerxian mythology.” Maria twisted in her seat to look at Sheska fully. “It has the head of a woman, the body of a lion, and the wings of an eagle. In the _Epic of Mithradatha,_ a sphinx stands guard at the entrance to the underworld and asks your soul a riddle. If you answer correctly, you pass into the afterlife. And if you answer wrong, it eats you.”

Sheska blinked. “That’s…a very specific codename.”

“It’s pretty nerdy, I know. The PM and I used to practice Xingese by translating old epic poems. Don’t tell anyone, though—I’ve got a tough reputation to uphold around here.”

She reached her arm back and unlocked the side door. Her hand just brushed Sheska’s elbow.

“Good luck!” she said, and winked.

Somehow, despite the sudden jitters shaking her knees, Sheska managed to leave the car. When she joined Nicholas at the back of the group, he only looked at her once and rolled his eyes.

 

* * *

 

Riza obeyed all three of Mrs. Oglinski’s instructions as she stood with her husband at the podium. The Prime Minister’s speech—thankfully unchanged from the version Harry had cajoled him into keeping last night—earned a round of applause from the gathered audience of press, patients, doctors, and onlookers. As soon as the red ribbon christening the new wing was cut, Riza’s smile turned gradually genuine. Perhaps she just had stage fright, Sheska thought as she followed the couple and their hovering guards into the building.

As Harry had warned, the Prime Minister did love to push the clock on his appointments. Here, though, Sheska might have hated him if he didn’t. All of the children were delighted and starstruck by their new visitors. The couple was outstandingly patient, letting themselves be dragged everywhere by tiny hands—the Prime Minister even sat cross-legged on the floor. Sheska hoped that at least one photograph of Riza graciously accepting an imaginary teacup would make it to Mrs. Oglinski’s front stoop.

The mood turned more somber on the upper floors. This was where the long-term patients stayed, the hospital director told them. The photographers were turned away. Most of these children were bed-bound; the group came to more than one room where a doctor peeked inside and only shook their head. The children they did meet made Sheska’s heart clench. It had been hard enough on her middle-aged mother to spend all her days in the same little room. It was unimaginable to go through something like that as a child.

Riza was just as gentle with these children as she had been with those recovering on the lower floors. She spoke at length with every parent and nurse and doctor. Whatever nervousness had plagued her that morning had fled entirely.

At the end of the hall, the director told them the girl in the room beyond was the victim of a terrible accident: while playing near a construction site, a falling beam had crushed her left arm. She was undergoing nerve treatments for future automail surgery—a risky procedure for someone so young. Though she had been duly warned, Sheska’s stomach still turned at the cables spilling out from the girl’s elbow. Her father was there, smoothing back his daughter’s matching crop of curly red hair from her feverish brow.

“Gianna,” he said tenderly, “tell Mr. Mustang: what kind of automail do you want to have?”

The girl’s expression was deadly serious. “A big claw,” she said, “with metal that won’t ever rust. So I can be a pirate.”

There was a chorus of giggles around the room. The Prime Minister grinned.

“That’s a marvelous idea, Gianna,” he said. “I’d love to hear your design plans.”

While the girl began to describe her future arm, a nurse carrying a steel tray wove between them. As Gianna spoke, the nurse filled a syringe on the tray out of her line of sight. With a quick, practiced motion, she administered the shot to Gianna’s shoulder while she was distracted. Gianna winced, but before she could cry out the needle was gone and the nurse was fixing a bandage over the spot. Sheska was in awe of the tactic; she remembered having to be pinned down by her father just to take cough syrup.

She was jolted from the memory when Riza barreled into her. Sheska’s clipboard clattered to the ground, but Riza only mumbled an apology as she flew from the room. The others looked up at the sound, confused.

“Sheska?” the Prime Minister called. He hadn’t risen from his seat next to Gianna’s father. He glanced at the door, still swinging. “Could you give my wife directions to the lavatory?”

“I—yes, of course, sir.” Picking up the clipboard, Sheska tucked it against her chest and ducked out of the room.

But Riza had found the lavatory first. When Sheska opened the door, she was sitting in the chair reserved for nursing mothers, her head slumped nearly to her knees. When she looked up, her face was alarmingly pale.

“Ma’am!” Sheska gasped, rushing to close the door. There didn’t seem to be anyone else inside. “Are you alright?”

“Could you open the window?” Riza mumbled. “I feel a little light-headed, is all.”

Sheska raced to wrench the window latch free. The wind billowed through at once, pulling strands of her hair from its pins. She hurried to dig her handkerchief out of her pocket, run it under the tap, wring it out, and fold it into a square.

“Thank you,” Riza said, taking the damp cloth and pressing it to her forehead. ‘I don’t need anything else—just a few minutes.”

Sheska hovered anxiously over her, trying to determine if she looked any more or less white. As she wracked her brain for what you were supposed to do if someone fainted—surely she’d read something from an etiquette book, or a medical journal?—the door opened and closed with a soft click.

“Pardon me, Sheska.”

It was the Prime Minister. Sheska stumbled as she backed away to give him room, but he didn’t see. He knelt in front of his wife. Very carefully, he extracted the handkerchief from her hand and moved it to the back of her neck. His hand rested on her knee.

“Needles.” Riza spoke slowly, her hands still pressed over her eyes, so quietly that Sheska almost missed it. “I’m so stupid. Of course there’d be needles in a hospital. And I feel terrible—running out on that poor girl, who has so much worse—”

“I transmuted her bed into a pirate ship. It’s tacky enough to rival Fullmetal’s style: skulls, crossbones, and all. She didn’t even notice you’d gone.”

Behind her hands, Riza made a sound between a laugh and groan. “Roy! Is that even allowed?”

The Prime Minister shrugged. “I can always change it back. But if we get a lawsuit from the hospital furniture company, it will at least give the papers something really outrageous to work with.”

This time it was definitely a laugh. When Riza looked up, some of the color had returned to her cheeks. The Prime Minister unfolded Sheska’s handkerchief and gently wiped the corners of his wife’s eyes and mouth where her makeup had smeared.

Even with his hand on her knee, it was all extremely chaste, yet somehow unbearably intimate. Sheska excused herself to return to the window and tug the sash closer to the frame. A few dead leaves had blown inside. She gathered them from the floor and dropped them into the waste bin, trying her best not to overhear the quiet conversation going on in the corner, even though part of her desperately wanted to.

At last, holding both of her husband’s hands, Riza rose to her feet.

“Sheska, you have a red agenda with you, correct?” the Prime Minister asked. Sheska nodded. “You’d better cancel my wife’s afternoon appointments. She’s going home to take a headache powder and lie down.”

“I am _fine,”_ Riza insisted.

“Luckily, Ross is already here to receive it, so she can radio the changes out quickly,” the Prime Minister continued as if he hadn’t heard. “We’ve already overshot our time here by a criminal amount, so I’m sure she won’t be too surprised.”

Riza protested again, but Sheska was already flipping through the agenda and drawing lines through the rest of the afternoon, making a note of the new exit time.

As she moved past them, her new loafers slipped on the tile. She wobbled wildly, one elbow nearly colliding with Riza’s nose before she caught her balance against the door handle. In the nick of time, the Prime Minister pulled his wife out of the way with a quick tug on their joined hands. He shot Sheska an exasperated look over Riza's head, and as she rushed out of the lavatory, Sheska thought, guiltily, that all day she’d proven herself rather useless. 


	2. Sandstorm

_(68)     The demon Khosru, lord of all beneath the earth, said,  
_ _“Leave, Sennen, and we shall take the life of your beloved, Atossa, in your place.”_

 _(70)     The goddess Sennen cried, “No! Atossa is my constant and my support._  
_She is my sage who counsels me. She is my warrior who fights by my side._  
_She did not forget her promise. She lamented over my burial grounds._  
_She played the drum in my honor. She sacrificed in the temples of the gods._  
_She beat her breast and tore her hair. She dressed herself in beggar’s cloth._  
_(75)     Alone she journeyed to the cities of Mashad and Quhyar and Teresh,_  
_and prostrated herself before the altars of Amuhia and Tiridatha and Vidarna.  
_ _Because of her, my life was saved. I will never give Atossa to you.”_

 

“What’s that?”

Sheska yelped when she slammed the book shut on her finger, left idling in the margin to keep track of the verse numbers. The book toppled off her desk and landed heavily in her lap when she yanked her hand free, the tip of her finger pinched red and already throbbing. Harry leaned over.

 _“Collected Myths and Legends of Ancient Xerxes, Fifth Edition,”_ he read off the spine. “You’re reading this on your lunch break? Sheesh! I barely made it through _The Tale of the Eastern Sage_ , and my degree’s in Literature!”

“I liked that one _,”_ Sheska admitted, rubbing her smarting finger. “Though my copy wasn’t annotated, so I didn’t understand much of the alchemical symbolism.”

“Dana!” Harry needed both hands to heft the book in the air and wave it. “Tiebreaker! Did you or did you not want to burn _The Tale of the Eastern Sage?”_

Dana’s purple-lacquered fingernails didn’t pause in their race across her adding machine keys. “Never read it,” she said around the pencil clenched in her teeth. “When I was your age, Harry, I actually had a social life.”

“Hey! Reading old books through university got me my job at Radio Capital!” Harry puffed out his chest, his head held high. “And my job at Radio Capital got me here!”

“You were fired from Radio Capital for rewriting the news reports and not telling anyone before they went to air. You got _here_ because the PM happened to like the edits. And speaking of edits—” Dana yanked the lever and reset the adding machine with a loud _ker-clunk,_ “—your speeches for the Cretan tour still aren’t on my desk.”

Harry deflated. “I don’t have that many left,” he added defensively.

“How many speeches does the PM need?” Sheska asked. “I thought the peace summit in Thessakona was only a few days long.”

“Yes, but the two he’s giving at the summit need to be rewritten in Cretan so that the translators can have copies beforehand. He’s making another speech at the new Amestrian embassy, one on the day they sign the trade agreements, one at the stop at West City Hall to commemorate the war memorial, and of course a handful of ‘Thank-you-for-having-me-in-insert-town-here’ speeches before we cross the border. And those ones, by the way—” he glared at Dana, “—can’t be completed until I’m actually in the town myself, so I know which local landmark or bakery to mention.”

“Glad you’re adding such a personal touch, Harry.”

“You may laugh, but knowing the regional varieties of jam danishes won Mustang the election!” Harry turned his glare on her when Sheska did laugh. “It earned support from the humble folk! He may have been a war hero in the East and a dashing rescuer in the capital, but he was a nobody in the West until he could tell an apple pinwheel from an apricot turnover.”

“Harry!” All heads in the office turned out of habit when Kain Fuery spoke. One of his many telephones was sandwiched between his shoulder and right ear. “Lieutenant General Marck’s waiting on Floor Two!”

 _“Shit.”_ Harry dropped the book back onto Sheska’s desk, sending a few of her papers into the air. His tie flapped over his shoulder as he sprinted out of the office.

Dana shook her head. “If the PM actually gets to Creta on schedule, I’ll eat my hat,” she sighed.

“You still have the summer,” Sheska reassured her, tucking the book back into her briefcase. “Between the three of you, I’m sure everything will work out fine.”

“I guess.” Dana ripped the paper from her adding machine and ran her eyes down the length of it. “I should’ve insisted on going, but someone needs to manage this office while the other two make sure the PM doesn’t fall off one of those seaside cliffs. And I couldn’t leave my girls with my husband for so long. He already covers all my late shifts.” Her face softened a little. “He’s a godsend.”

Sheska smiled. “I still haven’t met your family.”

“They’re only allowed to visit during the staff picnics, when we’re outside the office. Otherwise the twins would fall in love with those dogs, and Jonas isn’t as strong as I am at resisting them. Hell, the PM himself would probably find some way to stash a puppy in our car.” Dana eyed Sheska over the rims of her reading glasses. “But _you_ can bring special people to the office whenever you like.”

Sheska very much wished she’d kept the book out, to hide her face behind.

“I, um, I could introduce you to my cousin Zuzanna when she next visits,” she hurriedly answered. “She lives near North City on my uncle’s farm! They raise dairy cows up there, and I almost moved in with them a few years back but I thought I should finish my classes in Central first and my job at the court-martial office let me take off Tuesdays so Zuzanna ended up staying with me for a time—”

“I meant special people outside of the family tree, Sheska.” Dana gave her a sly grin. “Surely there has to be someone…?”

“Like Harry, I don’t have a life,” Sheska cut in. “I go to the library on all my days off! I hardly ever see the sun! I promise, Dana, I’m not hiding anyone! I’m very, very boring.”

“Oh, fine, have it your way,” Dana huffed. “You’re starting to morph into the First Lady.”

“I’m nothing like the First Lady!”

“Yes you are. Both of you have lips tighter than a steel girdle when it comes to your private life. I don’t think the First Lady will ever sit for an interview unless someone holds her at gunpoint. She’s the best thing that ever happened to the tabloids.”

Sheska frowned. “If she doesn’t talk to anyone, how could she be good for the tabloids?”

“She never confirms or denies anything, so they can make up whatever they want. Vivian Oglinski will be mopping up the pulp they’ve beaten her marriage to for the rest of this term.”

“Oh, that’ll die down,” Sheska said, waving her hand. “I used to read all my mother’s tabloids, and all of them have patterns. There won’t be enough to report on once they’ve been married another year or so. It’s like the radio stars: they get divorced whenever they need to promote a new program.”

Dana pursed her lips and glanced around the office. Pushing her reading glasses into her hair, she left her own desk to perch on the corner of Sheska’s and lean in conspiratorially.

“So long as the Mustangs are married, there’ll still be talk,” she whispered, “if the tabloids can say their marriage is a sham.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Dana narrowed her eyes. Sheska quickly lowered her voice. “Anyone can look up the certificate, it's a matter of public record.”

“Not a sham like it’s not legal, a sham like it’s a stunt. She was his personal assistant for years. Most people say it was arranged.”

Sheska’s eyebrows rose. “Why? They didn’t _need_ to get married; there are plenty of bachelors in government. The Fuhrer is even divorced!”

“The people didn’t vote for the Fuhrer,” Dana pointed out. “You’re making the guest list for the First Term Gala now, aren’t you? Look through it and tell me how many MPs are coming solo and how many are bringing a plus-one. Settling down is good for their reputations, and all of them know it.”

She had a point. “But,” Sheska still argued, “even if he couldn’t get elected without getting married, the PM didn’t have to pick his own assistant. He could’ve arranged it with anyone. Why Riza Hawkeye, if he didn’t…well…?”

Dana’s voice dropped even lower to whisper, “Because he was known as a bit of a cad. He’s been spotted with a number of girls over the years. The wrong kind of girls: dance hall waitresses and cabaret singers. Some paper even claimed they had pictures of him with that actress Elaine Zhao, though they never came forward with them. What’s the opposite of a cabaret girl?” Dana answered her own question: “A loyal soldier with fifteen years of service, a major’s stars, and a medal for being wounded in action in ‘15. It might not be a fairytale romance, but it looks good in print.”

“But they—” Sheska felt compelled to come forward with some evidence to the contrary, either out of loyalty to Riza or just for the sake of wanting to be truthful. She’d been at #5 Cherrywood Street for several months now. She spent more waking hours at Riza’s side than the Prime Minister did, and she had the stamped timecards to prove it. She had seen the Mustangs together at dozens of press events; they followed Mrs. Oglinski’s instructions more often than not, but it still wasn’t something that came naturally. She could count the times they used each other’s first names on one hand. They were certainly friendly, and respected one another.

But were they happy?

She changed tactics. “You’ve worked here since the campaign,” she pressed Dana. “Do _you_ think it’s a sham?”

Dana fiddled with the chain of her reading glasses, looking away.

“I remember being newly-married. My husband still worked at the mill then, and I at the bank. With his night shifts and my day shifts, we saw each other about as often as they do now,” she said. “All I can say is: they don’t act like me and my husband.”

The photograph of her parents wobbled when Sheska’s phone rang, prompting Dana to slide off the desk.

“Looks like the end of your break,” were Dana’s parting words, and Sheska scrambled for the phone as the adding machine resumed its rhythmic _ker-clunks._

 

* * *

 

The dogs weren’t allowed on the furniture, but they’d discovered that they could get around that rule by squeezing themselves onto someone’s lap instead. Lightning had taken a liking to Sheska and would hop onto her knees the moment she sat down. It didn’t help that Lightning was also the largest of the four. Tufts of white fur floated around Sheska like dandelion fluff as she scratched his nose and thought mournfully of buying yet another lint brush.

“Do you have any idea where to put Mr. MacGruer?” she asked the dog, angling the seating chart in front of Lightning’s nose. “He’s with the Blue Party, but he can’t stand Mr. Baxter or Mr. Friese, so he can’t sit at Table 6. There’s a spot at Table 12, but that’s already half-filled with White Party MPs, who hate him more. And if we put him at Table 3, his wife will complain that she can’t see the podium, even though she’s been near-sighted for years and is just too vain to buy glasses.”

Lightning looked at the chart intently, and then attempted to eat her pencil.

“Alright, Lightning, you’ve cuddled enough,” Riza tutted. “Down.”

Lightning obeyed but whined loudly about it. The whining continued until Riza pointed to the door and ordered, “Go find your sisters,” and he was off like a bullet.

“Where were we?” she said, handing Sheska an unchewed pencil. “Ah, MacGruer. I’m tempted to stick him at Table 3 anyway. But if we shuffle the Fuhrer to the other side of Table 1 and squeeze them in, Francine MacGruer will be so busy trying to trap him into a conservation that she won’t care about who’s speaking at the podium. She can be Table 1’s problem.” She penciled their names in on the seating chart.

“If you want, ma’am,” Sheska said. “But you and the PM will also be at Table 1.”

Riza snatched the eraser from the table and quickly transferred _MacGruer, A_ and _MacGruer, F_ away.

“Table 6 it is. Baxter and Friese will have to deal with them.” She tossed the chart back down and looked morosely at the open binder of Gala plans. “I keep forgetting that I have to attend this thing too.”

Over the last few months, the Green Room had been steadily morphing into an all-purpose planning center for the First Term Gala. The tradition for Parliament to celebrate the first year of the Prime Minister’s term had lain dormant for decades under Bradley, but someone had suggested that with Fuhrer Grumman’s reinstatement of the premier office, it was only appropriate that the Gala be revived too. The suggestion was passed along until it finally reached Mustang himself, who readily agreed to take on the duties of putting it together.

He was less enthused, Riza had explained coldly, when someone else told him that tradition dictated that gala-wrangling duties fell to the Prime Minister’s spouse instead.

“There have only been three female PMs since this country was founded, and no Fuhrers,” Dana was known to frequently gripe. “I doubt their _husbands_ were expected to pick out flower arrangements and write name cards.”

There was enough in the budget to hire someone else to take care of the flower arrangements and name cards. But the event planner didn’t know the fine details of the guests’ intricate, ever-changing party squabbles. Sheska’s memory had always been an important asset in this job, and now it was proving vital as Riza fired off questions.

“Best place for Adamson?”

“Table 15, between Mr. O’Neil and Mr. Mazurski. Their wives are all in the same lunch club.”

“What about Yule?”

“Anywhere but a Blue Party table. Maybe she can fit at Table 9?”

“That’s full, but I can move her next to Ferris at 10, I think. I still think we should keep Redford away from Tillman, but everyone hates Tillman.”

“Maybe Mr. and Mrs. Ubec would hate him a little less? They’re at Table 14.”

Riza kicked off her shoes and rose to stretch while Sheska replaced _Tillman, C_ at Table 14. As Harry had warned her, the First Lady hated being idle. When Riza started a project, she pushed it to the end with the determination of a freight train chugging at top speed. They’d started that day’s planning after lunch, and now Sheska was alarmed to check the mantle clock and find it long past dinner.

“How are you doing, ma’am?” she asked as Riza grunted and twisted her back. “We only have a few left. Maybe we should stop here and pick up the rest tomorrow morning.”

“No, no, you go home. I can finish this by myself.” Riza rubbed her eyes. “It’ll be a miracle if I don’t need reading glasses by the end of this term. The Prime Minister would have a field day; I’ve made fun of his too much.”

Sheska paused in the middle of sweeping Lightning’s fur from her skirt. “I didn’t even know he had them!”

“Yes, but don’t tell anyone.” Riza even glanced at the door, as if the Prime Minister could be listening outside. “He only wears them in the library, which is off-limits to all staff, even Nicholas." She shook her head. "He’s just as ridiculous as Francine MacGruer.”

 

* * *

 

Sheska was the last one to leave the office that night. She yawned as she tugged on her coat, waving to the guards on duty as she passed through the first floor. Unlike #5, the other flats on Cherrywood Street were full of ordinary families settling down for the night; it was so quiet that Sheska’s footsteps echoed down the block. The rhododendron bushes outside #1 were in bloom. In the glow of the streetlamps, the blossoms looked almost unearthly, globes of vivid pink spilling out of the dark leaves.

She was struck with a sudden, silly impulse to pluck one. Why not? Surely no one from #1 would notice. Sheska giggled to herself as she made her way to the tram stop, tucking the flower into her hatband. She felt oddly giddy, probably from skipping dinner. The industrial-strength coffee they brewed in the office kitchen might also have been to blame.

There was no one waiting at the tram stop, and no one watching from the flats. She spun on her heel once, twice, tapping her feet in the pattern of the dance that Gwendolyn, a Treasury clerk, had tried to teach her one day at lunch. Her briefcase was too heavy for a prop, so for the finale Sheska tossed her hat high in the air and caught it with a flourish. She twirled into the pool of light beneath a streetlamp and struck a pose.

There was a loud burst of applause.

Sheska whirled around as Maria Ross stepped away from the hedges near the tram stop, where her green coat had masked her against the leaves.

“Bravo!” she crowed, grinning wickedly. “Encore!”

For a brief moment, Sheska seriously considered diving into the same hedge and living there for the rest of her life.

She managed to weakly groan, “I thought I was the last one out.”

“Sorry,” Maria laughed. “You were at the end of the street when I left. I was going to run and catch up to you, but then the show started. I couldn’t dare interrupt an artist.”

Sheska sunk onto the bench, hoping moving away from the streetlamp would mask how red her face was turning. Maria leaned against the post.

“Don’t worry, I’m not the blackmailing type.” She mimed locking her mouth with a key and tossing it over her shoulder. “What happens after-hours stays after-hours.” In the yellow light, her dark hair was washed gold and gleaming, and she was still grinning. Sheska considered the hedge plan again.

“Good to know,” she mumbled. She glanced down the street, but there was no sign of the tram approaching. “Are you riding the B Line too? I’ve taken the 22:30 a few times, but I’ve never run into you here.”

Maria’s grin faded. “Oh, no,” she said, “the 22:30 B came fifteen minutes ago.”

“What?” Sheska dug out her wristwatch from the sleeve of her cardigan and found Maria hadn’t lied. “But—but—I checked the mantle clock in the Green Room before I left, and it was still ten minutes til—”

Maria shook her head. “That clock was a gift from the PM’s mother, and that’s why he won’t let anyone take it to the junk shop where it belongs. It’s always a good twenty minutes behind. We should’ve issued a warning about it, but you’re the first assistant to the First Lady, so no one else has spent as much time in the Green Room.”

“No, it’s my fault,” Sheska said miserably. “I should’ve noticed by now. Or checked my own watch. Or asked the First Lady.” She let her head loll back and thud against the bench. “I guess I can take the D Line in forty minutes, and transfer to the late bus at Cheswick Avenue, and then just walk from there to—”

Her stomach cut in with a roar so loud it startled Maria from her lean on the lamppost. Sheska looked up at the starry sky and wondered which ancient god was set on punishing her.

“Or,” Maria said, “you could get that dinner you skipped, and take the G Line with me.”

Sheska’s head jerked back up.

“Oh no,” she said hurriedly, “I wouldn’t want to make you stay out.”

“I’m always out late anyway,” Maria shrugged. “Mustang never sleeps, so neither do any of us. I’ve been having dinner at midnight since 1915. Do you like Xingese?”

“I've, um, never had it.”

“Then it’s settled,” Maria declared, her smile wide. “We’re going to Shang’s.”

When the G tram pulled up to the stop, Maria playfully offered Sheska her elbow. And maybe it was the late hour, or the exhaustion of table sorting, or the smell of the rhododendron bushes in the early summer air, but something powerful took hold of Sheska’s arm—and made her take Maria’s.

 

* * *

 

The diner was half-hidden in a dingy alleyway, but it smelled so good that Sheska didn’t hesitate to follow Maria inside. The only other patrons seated at the counter were a group of construction workers getting ready for the night shift, slurping down huge bowls of fried noodles. One gave them a curious look at they took up two seats at the end of the bar, but Maria acted like she didn’t notice. Sheska followed her example.

A Xingese waitress with graying hair and a grease-stained apron handed them two menus. She broke into a smile when she saw Maria, and suddenly the two of them were having a rapid-fire conversation in Xingese. Sheska turned awkwardly to the menu, only to feel even more overwhelmed by the long list of dishes she’d never heard of. She turned the pages back and forth until finally the waitress poured them two beers and left.

“Sorry,” Maria said, turning back to Sheska. “I haven’t been here in a while. Had to fill in Bao on my latest landlord situation.”

“It’s fine!” Sheska sipped hurriedly at the foam flowing over the edge of her glass. “I’m really impressed. Your Xingese is amazing!”

“I had to be fluent.” Maria only glanced at the menu once before putting it down, decision made. “I didn’t know how long I’d be there, and only the nobles there can afford foreign tutors. I would’ve been lost if I didn’t know the common language. It’s difficult, but musical, in a way. Sometimes I’d go to the market just to listen to the hawkers make their pitches. The markets are incredible in Jingshi; you can buy your groceries from the same place they sell tomb treasures.”

Sheska imagined Maria Ross ducking through bazaars, haggling for artifacts in alleys behind Xingese temples, deciphering the delicate brushwork of ancient scrolls over a lacquered desk. It wasn’t difficult—Maria had that dashing air of a novel heroine, the no-nonsense confidence and wardrobe to match.

“It sounds amazing,” Sheska sighed. “I wish my life could’ve been like yours.”

Maria gave her a questioning look. “You wish you could’ve faked your own death to escape a fixed trial?”

Sheska choked on her beer.

“I—no! I meant— _ack_ —I wanted— _hrk_ —” Maria thumped her on the back. “ _Gack_ —thanks—just that—” Maria patiently waited until her coughing subsided, and then offered Sheska a handkerchief to mop up the spilled beer on the table. “Sorry. I’m so sorry. No, um, that’s not what I meant at all.”

“I figured,” Maria said dryly, but smiled gently.

“I meant that I wish my life could’ve been interesting, like yours. Important.” Sheska looked down at her half-empty glass, bubbles fizzing from the bottom to burst at the surface. “There were articles in the papers about you! A whole radio interview! You escaped from prison, were saved by Mr. Mustang, made it across the Eastern Desert, then came back to save Amestris from the coup! The closest I ever got to helping the country was to write down all the library books I could remember from the First Branch, and then be fired when I couldn’t remember any more. I was hardly an asset to Bradley’s government.”

“But you took this job, didn’t you? I mean, the Prime Minister’s office is about as deep in government as you can get without running for office yourself.” Maria cocked her head, studying her. “What made you want to join us?”

“My mother.” It came out of Sheska’s mouth before she could stop it. She twisted her hands in her lap, palms sweating.

“Your mother…?” Maria prompted softly.

Maybe Dana was right: maybe she was getting too much like the First Lady. Sheska never talked about her mother. Not to her aunt and uncle in the North, or her favorite cousin Zuzanna. Not even to Maisie.

But the diner was warm, the beer was good, and Maria didn’t look like she was going to interrogate her. She didn’t look like someone who would mind, or even judge, if “my mother” was all Sheska said.

Sheska curled her hands around her glass and took a deep breath.

“In the spring of ‘15, after the coup, my flat was behind the disaster zone. I couldn’t get home, so I managed to pull some strings with the hospital and sleep on the floor of my mother’s room for a little while. For two weeks we did nothing but listen to the radio and read the papers. It was cramped, and I had none of my clothes, but it was one of the most exciting times of my life.

“We knew nothing about the government, but by the time I was allowed to move back into my building, I had the whole constitution memorized. My father made it to Second Lieutenant before he died, but my mother knew even less about the military than I did. I got my hands on every source I could find so I could explain Fuhrer Grumman’s reforms to her that summer. It was hard at first—I hardly understood some myself—but I interviewed everyone at the court-martial office who’d give me the time of day. Sometimes I’d even talk to the Fuhrer’s staff when they came to pick up files.

“The reforms said that within the next ten years, the Fuhrer would reinstate elections of the premier office; the first time since 1895 that Amestris, not the Fuhrer, would pick its own Prime Minister. I’d met Mr. Mustang before, when he was a colonel. He kind of scared me. I never wanted to bother him because he seemed so busy all the time. But whenever he came on the radio, my mother always said, ‘Watch out for that Colonel Mustang, Sheska. He saw what was wrong with the old military before anyone else. He’s going to be our new PM. You should stick with him and be a part of history!’ I laughed. There was still a hole where First Avenue used to be. I couldn’t imagine we’d ever have fully-paved roads again, let alone an election.

“My mother…she died three years after that. It wasn’t a shock; she’d been sick for so long. She never even got to vote. But she was right: Mr. Mustang won.

“So I thought, if I took this job with him and the First Lady, maybe I could do something other than read about history.” Sheska gripped her glass tighter. “Maybe I could actually be part of it. That is, well—” she stopped and drained the rest of her beer quickly, face going red. “That was really long-winded. I’m sorry.”

Maria cleared her throat. “Okay, Sheska,” she said softly, tapping her fingers against her glass, “do you want to know why I signed up for the military academy?”

Sheska nodded.

“Because in my final year of secondary school, a girl named Emily Smith was swooning about how amazing soldiers looked in uniform, and with my chicken-bone arms and horrible haircut, I thought it was the only way I’d be able to impress her.” Maria gestured to herself and said, “So I think it’s pretty clear which of us has won this job nobility contest.”

It took a moment. But then Sheska couldn’t hold in her laughter anymore. She bent double, nose nearly touching the greasy countertop, howling with mirth. Maria tried to gulp down the rest of her beer but had to stop, unable to keep from giggling mid-sip.

“Shut up,” Sheska wheezed, thanking Bao when she brought them two more glasses. “Tell me about your job now. Tell me about the Prime Minister and the sandstorm.”

“I can’t obey all of those instructions at once,” Maria teased, lightly bumping her elbow against Sheska's.

Pans hissed on the stove, steam wafting through the diner. The two cooks chattered back and forth in Xingese, another customer slurped at a bowl of noodles with his tie tossed over his shoulder, and Sheska breathed in the sweet smell of frying dumplings as Maria began to tell the story.

 

* * *

 

Two weeks later, they had been to Shang's three more times after work, and twice to the deli around the corner during lunch hour.

The new rota of agendas were stacked on everyone’s desks on the first Monday of the month. When Sheska opened her red one, she found a rhododendron blossom pressed between the pages, its petals the same bright pink as the ones on the lawn of #1 Cherrywood Street.

She snapped it shut, worried that someone had seen, but the office was mayhem as usual. She slipped the flower into her latest book— _Seducing the Sage_ by Sabine Stallion, a recommendation from Dana—and tried her best to master the First Lady’s art of neutral expressions.

 

* * *

 

As it happened, Mrs. Oglinski’s July visit lined up with Riza’s appointment at the Lucy Harris Salon. It was not a coincidence.

“Couldn’t I wear one of my campaign gowns?” Riza sighed, flicking through a rack of beaded frocks with all the enthusiasm of a prisoner forced to march. “A year is hardly enough time to make them unfashionable.”

“No.” Mrs. Oglinski thrust another selection into the arms of the attending clerk. “Over my dead body.”

Sheska herself didn’t have any complaints about visiting the salon. Though she didn’t read fashion magazines, she’d always liked being surrounded by clothes, to run her hands along the dangling sleeves of blouses and admire the towers of folded cardigans that only shopgirls could stack so neatly. When she was little, her mother used to take her shopping every year to pick out a birthday tie for her father. He wore them all, even though Sheska’s tastes were far more garish than his own.

She still liked bright colors best: orchid purple and bottle green and sunflower yellow. She lingered in the section where Lucy Harris hung her latest summer blouses, stroking the floral-print cotton and pintucked chiffon with longing. One peach number with a pointed collar was so tempting that she couldn’t help but pull the hanger from the rack.

And then she thought of Maisie, in the kitchen, looking her up and down with distaste.

_Sheska, come on. Don’t you think that’s a little too much? You have to wear your uniform to work anyway. Who are you trying to impress?_

“Do you like it, miss?” The clerk moved nimbly, even carrying Mrs. Oglinski’s mound of frocks, and had somehow appeared at her side without making a sound. “That color is beautiful on you! Shall I set up a changing room for you?”

“Oh, no, thank you.” Sheska hurried to shove the blouse back. “I have to assist the First Lady, I can’t shop for myself.”

“I’m not the First Lady.” The two of them turned to find Riza watching. She wore the same hard, stern expression that came over her when she found spelling errors in official memos. “‘First Lady’ is the official title given only to the wife of the Fuhrer. No spouse of the Prime Minister, nor of any Member of Parliament, is given a title. I should not be addressed as such.”

Sheska ducked her head. “Yes, ma’am. My mistake, ma’am.”

“And I have quite enough assistance already.” Riza walked over and plucked the peach blouse off the rack, tossing on top of the pile in the clerk’s arms. “That won’t do for an excuse.”

While Riza and the clerk moved to the changing rooms, Mrs. Oglinski elbowed Sheska.

“Don’t look so guilty. She should know by now that no one wants to bother saying ‘the spouse of the Prime Minister’ every time. The PM even calls her First Lady on purpose when he wants to really rile her up.” Mrs. Oglinski lowered her voice to add, “He must have a death wish.” Shaking her head, she hooked Sheska’s arm in hers and began pulling her to the changing rooms.

Riza was right; while she tried on gowns, Sheska had very little to do. She sat next to Mrs. Oglinski in the armchairs near the tailor’s pedestal, flipping idly through the salon’s pattern catalogue. It wasn’t long before the clerk was sent back with at least half the pile already rejected.

“Why is everything so sheer?” Riza griped from behind the curtain. “Necklines these days are so low you’d think there’s a fabric shortage.”

“Fabric shortage? God forbid! Roy would’ve built that Xingese railroad for nothing!”

The clerk jumped as a very tall, very blonde woman came bustling through the front door, beaded scarf swinging like a spangled pendulum from her neck. Her frock was the most vivid shade of teal Sheska had ever seen. She embraced Mrs. Oglinski warmly and shook Sheska’s hand.

“Lucy Harris. Charmed.” In the direction of the changing room, she called, “Sorry I’m late, Riza! Damned cab blew a tire ten blocks away, and I wasn’t about to ruin these shoes.” To Mrs. Oglinski, “What’s the mood today?”

“Antagonistic,” Mrs. Oglinski replied.

“Perfect.” The designer smiled. “Makes it more satisfying to talk her into something.”

Lucy Harris, it turned out, was extremely gifted at talking people into things. When Riza deigned a piece good enough to show to the rest of the group, Ms. Harris pointed out some quality of the cut or texture that had them all looking at it in an entirely different light. Sheska wished the agendas had more room for her to take notes. Riza was skilled at arguing—Sheska had seen her skills on display many times—but Ms. Harris seemed to anticipate all of her qualms and deflected them with the ease and grace of a country club tennis player.

“Ms. Harris is the one behind that burgundy frock the First Lady wore to the Fuhrer’s birthday last year,” the clerk confided as Sheska helped her fetch a pair of shoes in the workshop. “You should’ve heard her sales pitch—it was genius! Ms. Harris could be an MP herself.”

The afternoon progressed until the selection was narrowed down to two gowns: one violet and one ivory. Everyone was exhausted, even though only Riza and the clerk had done most of the moving around. This was the third time Riza had tried on the ivory gown, but judging by her constant rearranging of the pleats, she still hadn’t made up her mind.

“We need a change of scenery,” Ms. Harris suddenly declared. “Sheska, Vivian said that peach blouse was for you. Why don’t you try it on for us?”

“Oh, no, I don’t think—” she started, but the blouse was in her hands and the changing room curtain shut in her face before she could finish.

Of course it fit, and perfectly too. It flattered her complexion and slimmed her hips, and the peach color made Sheska think of having ice cream on a summer day. She loved it. If she died tomorrow, she wanted to be buried in this blouse.

_Who are you trying to impress?_

She hurriedly pulled it back over her head—or tried to. Her arms were halfway out of the sleeves when something snagged on the edge of her glasses. Sheska froze, thinking of the number she’d glimpsed on the price tag.

“Uh, could I get some help?” she cried in what she thought was the direction of the curtain. Her field of vision was a void of peach.

“I’ve got you.” There was the sound of heels clicking and the curtain swishing open and shut, and then a pair of hands deftly unhooked the snag and tugged the blouse back down over her head and shoulders. When she straightened her glasses, she looked up and found Riza.

“You look wonderful!” she said, smiling at Sheska. “Shall we show the others?”

“No, ma’am, that’s alright, I was actually just taking it off,” Sheska said quickly. “I don’t think it would fit in, um, with the rest of my clothes.”

Riza put a hand on her shoulder. “Sheska,” she said gently, “if it’s about the cost, I understand. But you deserve to give yourself something nice every now and then.”

“I know, ma’am. It’s more that’s it not…not my style.”

It didn’t work. Sheska practically squirmed under Riza’s hard, skeptical gaze until the truth burst out of her of its own accord.

“It would make me stand out, and I don’t want to stand out,” she babbled weakly. “People will think I’m just looking for attention. I love the color and the cut and—and everything else about it, but it’s flashy and I’m not, and I shouldn’t try to be.”

Riza looked confused. “Why not?”

“Because—b-because—”

“Because someone told you so, didn’t they,” Riza finished. She looked at Sheska with a knowing gaze. Sheska didn’t know what to say. “Forgive me for prying, but are you still with…?”

Sheska shook her head. “Not since last year, ma’am.”

“Good. Then I won’t get in trouble with Vivian for telling them to go to hell.” Riza straightened her sash. “You don’t think this is too conservative, do you? The other Parliament wives show so much skin, I always look like an old maid by comparison.”

With her pale hair, sharp features, and ivory silk swathing her from shoulder to ankle, the First Lady looked far more like a statue magically come to life than any old maid Sheska had ever seen, and she told her so.

“Really? Then I suppose this is going to be the one.” Riza motioned for Sheska to turn, and quickly undid the buttons at the back of the neck that had trapped her before. “Get the blouse if you want to, Sheska, and only if _you_ want to. Whoever told you not to make yourself happy—my advice is to imagine yourself having tea with them. Think about looking them right in the eye, without blinking, and then spit in their cup.” She gracefully moved the hem of her skirt out of the way as she pushed the curtain aside to take her leave. “Works for me every time.”

Lucy Harris kissed Mrs. Oglinski and Riza on both cheeks when they left, and then turned and did the same to Sheska. Sheska stammered her thanks as Ms. Harris complimented her selection and hoped she’d return soon.

“That’s a new record today: fastest Riza’s ever picked a gown.” Ms. Harris beamed. “You’re a good luck charm, Sheska!”

At home, Sheska unwrapped the neat bow from the little box the clerk had given her and set the blouse on a hanger. It was by far the brightest thing in her entire closet: a peach fish swimming in a pond of brown and gray.

She imagined the First Lady spitting in Maisie’s tea—and couldn’t help but laugh.

 

* * *

 

The First Term Gala was no longer a distant worry and now a very present fear: hardly six weeks were left to get everything in order. On top of that, the Prime Minister’s team was so deep in preparations for the peace summit in Creta that Sheska felt burdensome every time she had to pull Harry or Dana away from their latest hundred-page briefings. Nicholas had vanished entirely. Sheska could only hear his distinct, clicking footsteps racing around the building after the Prime Minister, Black Hayate’s jingling collar never far behind.

On how the Prime Minister himself was faring, Riza only remarked tiredly once, “He practices Cretan in his sleep.”

It was an unusually cold summer thus far. Storm clouds clogged the skies in the early mornings, making the dogs whine and beg for attention whenever they couldn’t be walked outside. Sheska was so covered in fur and drool that she was beginning to pray for heat and sunshine. She tried to shush Cyclone’s whining as she finished the orders for the Gala’s floral centerpieces, but Cyclone only stopped whining in order to start barking at the telephone.

“Could you get that, please? It’s Captain Catalina. You can tell her I’ll call back later.” Riza, elbows deep in the dinner menus at her desk, didn’t even look up. “Cyclone, _quiet.”_

But when Sheska answered the call, the voice at the other end didn’t belong to Captain Catalina. It was deep, male, and said only four words:

_“Code Yellow on Sphinx.”_

“Um, sorry?” Sheska tried to balance the phone against her shoulder, hands still full of receipts. “This is Sheska Janovich, speaking from the fifth floor?”

 _“What? Janovich—shit, the new girl?”_ The voice was irritated. _“Is the First Lady there? Put her on the line.”_

“She’s not able to—”

_“Put her on the line!”_

“Ma’am, I’m sorry,” Sheska said, no longer caring if the person on the other end could hear her or not, “but it sounds like some military bigshot who won’t take no for an answer.” Riza gave the phone an exasperated look before standing up to take the handset.

“This is the Green Room—” Riza went suddenly quiet, listening to the caller intently. “Oh. Has he—I see. Yes. Yes, thank you, Havoc, I’ll alert them now. Call this line with further updates as the situation develops.”

She hung up, her mouth clenched tight. She whistled sharply and the dogs' ears perked up.

“Sheska,” Riza said, hurrying to her desk and sweeping off the menus with one arm, “open the door and tell Sam it’s Code Yellow, if he hasn’t already gone to fetch Lou. Then get whatever you may need from your desk—papers and wallet, coat, your lunch—it may be a few hours before all-clear. Don’t let anyone detain you. Don’t take the lift. Stay away from all of the windows.”

“Ma’am?” Sheska's stomach dropped. “What’s happened?”

But Riza didn’t answer her at first. She opened her desk drawer and then wrestled it out of its frame entirely, pens clattering to the floor as she all but tossed it aside. Thrusting her arm into the hollow, her eyes narrowed in concentration before the soft _click_ of some inner gear popped open a panel on the side of the desk. Riza slid it back and pulled out a single pistol.

“An armed man was apprehended at the House of Parliament,” she said, loading it quickly with a clip she pulled from the same hidden compartment. “We don’t know if he’s the only attacker or part of a larger group. So the Prime Minister is under Code Orange security—known threat present—and I’m under Code Yellow here. Level of threat unclear.”

Thunder barked once when Riza snapped the compartment shut again, but quieted immediately when Black Hayate growled. Rain began to splatter against the windows as voices grew louder in the hall, the heavy footsteps of Sam and Lou hurrying to the door.

“That means until further notice, this whole building is under lockdown.” Riza aimed her gun at the floor, eyes alert and trained on the door. “Get your things, Sheska. Quickly.”

 

* * *

 

It was the longest three hours of Sheska’s life. Though Sam and Lou were both in the room, all conversation trickled into tense silence by the end of the first thirty minutes. Riza was not a talkative person by nature, but the change that came over her was unlike anything Sheska had seen. Her short sentences quickly devolved into one-word answers, grunts, and then finally mute nods. She would not sit, but did not pace. She only looked away from the door to look at the still-silent phone. Sam and Lou only spoke when other guards came to deliver brief updates at the door. Each tick of the clock was practically a boom of thunder.

Sheska jumped when the phone finally rang, bell piercing the air. It was in Riza’s hand before it could ring twice.

“This is she. Yes, put it through.” A moment, and then Riza angrily demanded, “What on earth took you—” She stopped, taken aback. “Nicholas? I’m so sorry, I was expecting—he was supposed to—I understand, but where is he now?” Sheska could only hear faint murmuring, but his explanation didn’t please Riza whatsoever. If anything, she only looked angrier. “I see,” she replied icily. “Well then there’s not much else to do, is there? Thank you for updating me on the situation, Nicholas. Goodbye.”

The handset clanged against the receiver as she hung up.

“All clear,” she told Sam and Lou. With a nod each, they took up their firearms and left the room, taking up the usual position outside the door. Riza unloaded her pistol with a smooth, practiced motion, and soon it vanished back into the desk, the drawer in back place, the hidden panel invisible once more. Sheska watched her mechanically set the room back in order, stupefied at how quickly the atmosphere had changed again.

“Ma’am, please, let me help!” she pleaded, bending down to scoop up the fallen stacks of menus. “What did Nicholas say? Have they found the other terrorists? Was there an attack? Was anyone hurt?”

“No injuries, no casualties, no evidence of a group plot,” Riza replied, tapping a sheaf of the menus on the desk to align the edges. There was no delicacy in the gesture. “Just one angry man who had too much to drink. He was tackled by security before he even made it inside the House.”

“And the Prime Minister?”

Riza slapped the sheaf down. “The Prime Minister is fine. The Prime Minister was so convinced of his safety, in fact, that he saw fit to avoid the traffic on Fourth Avenue, which was shut down for the police to conduct a search, by getting out of his vehicle and walking to Kressler Street. Leaving half of his guards behind.”

Sheska blinked. “He…how…but that must’ve been ten blocks! In this weather?” The sky rumbled outside. “What was he thinking?”

Suddenly, all four of the dogs rose to their feet, sniffing the air. The younger three hurried to the door, tails wagging, but Black Hayate walked back to Riza, butting her calf once with his head.

“You can ask him yourself,” Riza said, eyes narrowed. “I believe he’s just arrived.”

The door opened, revealing Lou’s face. “Ma’am—” he began, but the opening was wide enough for Lightning, Thunder, and Cyclone to squeeze through, their paws skidding on the wood in a pell-mell dash down the hall, a chorus of happy barks and yips echoing from the ceiling. Harry’s face popped up under Lou’s, his dripping hair plastered over his ears.

“Ma’am,” he said, smiling weakly, “is there any chance you have some larger towels?”

 

* * *

 

Harry was the driest of the party, if that could be believed. He claimed it was thanks to Stephen, the tallest of the Prime Minister’s guards, who had walked in front and shielded him for most of the trip.

“Like a great, big, benevolent mountain!” Harry praised, beaming up at Stephen. Stephen grunted in a tone that suggested he wasn’t flattered; Dana had already appraised his shoes and broken the news that they were ruined. Lionel, the second guard, had simply accepted his fate of being cat-called for going around in his shirtsleeves, the white fabric soaked to transparency over his muscled chest.

And the Prime Minister—he looked like he’d been fished out of a lake.

“Lightning, you needy little imp, the last thing I want is to be wet _and_ hairy,” he scolded, nudging the dog away. In an effort to spare the floors of #5 Cherrywood, Dana had insisted that the only place her boss could stand was in the bathtub of his own flat, where she and Sheska tried to peel his shivering arms from his sodden coat sleeves. “Why can’t you be more well-behaved, like your father?” Black Hayate only yawned, tail thumping against the bathmat.

“That’s a question one might ask of many people here.”

Riza stood at the sink, arms crossed, watching his struggle with an expression bordering on murderous. The Prime Minister grimaced.

“You may as well start,” he said. “The longer you withhold your lectures, the scarier they become, you know.”

“I know.”

“Ah. So standing there and glaring until my skin crawls is a tactical decision. I should have guessed, given that—ow, Dana, ow, that’s a cufflink!—your standard periods of pre-lecture silence and barbed remarks have only gotten more terrifying with time—Lightning, I said down!—like many of your other skills. All of your skills.” The Prime Minister attempted what might have been a very smoldering look, if his hair wasn’t in his eyes. “I can’t believe my luck, sometimes, at finding so talented a woman—”

“Dana, Sheska, thank you for your assistance,” Riza said as her husband’s coat finally fell into the tub with a soggy _thump._ “I can handle it from here.”

The two assistants and all four dogs were then ushered brusquely out. The door lock clicked behind them.

Sheska started to protest when Dana leaned down to listen at the keyhole, but Dana only hissed, “Look, Sheska, if she goes to jail for killing him, we’ll both be out of a job.”

And against her better judgment, Sheska found herself leaning in too. The sound of running water obscured most of the conversation, but she picked out what she could.

_—Riza—it wasn’t as if—_

_—Unbelievable!—against everything—We agreed—_

_—An idiot—knife barely fit to slice a loaf of bread—_

_—Waiting for hours!—_

_—Fish in a barrel, with no escape!—You wouldn’t—capable of defending—_

_—Don’t know why—you always—after everything—_

_—Can’t control what will happen—in Creta—_

_—Don’t—_

_—I don’t know what you—how I’m supposed—_

_—Scare me—_

The water shut abruptly off. Dana and Sheska scrambled away, hurrying downstairs as quickly and quietly as possible—the dogs, of course, determined to foil them by getting underfoot. As Sheska hurried to Kain Fuery’s desk to find the jar of treats, she passed Harry, swaddled in towels, being berated by a very dry and very angry Nicholas.

“What was I supposed to do?” Harry cried, throwing his hands in the air. “Sit in an empty car while the PM is weaving through back alleys, or get out and make sure someone has an eye on him?”

“You were supposed to _get him back in the car!”_ Nicholas spat. “Where he couldn’t be targeted!”

“I don’t know how much experience you have behind crosshairs, Nick, but it’s a hell of a lot harder to hit a moving target than a still one,” Harry argued. “While the police were holding all traffic hostage, a street thug with a gun could’ve taken out any number of MPs waiting there, god forbid if there was a real sniper! We were all sitting ducks in that car! I’m telling you, the PM made the right call.”

“It could’ve been an ambush!”

“And what if it was?! He was a State-fucking-Alchemist! He can blow things up by clapping his hands! I felt safer sprinting through a thunderstorm with Mustang than waiting eighty minutes for the buffoons of Central Police to search the gutters for more drunken anarchists with butter knives!”

While Dana stepped in to try and defuse her two coworkers, the phone on Sheska’s desk began to ring. She took Fuery’s jar of treats and opened it, tossing a handful to the dogs as she answered.

“It’s been a long day already, Sheska.” Riza’s voice was flat and dull. “Take the afternoon off, have an early night, and we’ll pick up where we left off tomorrow.”

“Alright, ma’am. I’ll see you then,” Sheska acquiesced, but she knew, deep down, that the First Lady would be working til dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The opening myth was based off of text from the Sumerian myth "The Descent of Inanna." [You may read an English translation of it here!](http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr141.htm)
> 
> Riza's ivory gown is based on the Delphos gown designed by Henriette Negrin in 1909 and produced by the fashion house of her husband, Mariano Fortuny. These dresses were originally intended to be worn as informal day or tea dresses in the home, but by the 1920s and 1930s were being made in darker and bolder colors for evening wear. [You can read plenty more about the Fortunys and the Delphos line here!](https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/qgJiyD72_413Jw) The dress I referenced specifically was [this one.](https://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/2611M/lots/642)


	3. Stranger

Maria was the one person in the office who was not only unangered by the Prime Minister’s storm sprint, but completely unsurprised by it.

“Yeah, that’s exactly the sort of stunt I’d expect from him.” She rolled her eyes before snatching one of Sheska’s chips. “Why else do you think he’s got four guards indoors? Once he makes up his mind to get in trouble, there’s no stopping him. Easier to focus on damage control.”

“I’ve never seen the First Lady this angry,” Sheska sighed. “She hasn’t even asked to see his daily agenda. And she _always_ asks!”

“Oh, she may be angry now, now she’s more used to it than anyone.” Another chip appeared between Maria’s fingers. “It’s been the same pattern for years: he grovels until her anger fades, then goes out of his way to be a devout rule-follower until she relaxes enough to let him break more rules. Hawkeye could hold a grudge forever, but Mustang can’t stand being out of her good graces. He’ll bend over backwards until she’s happy. Just watch.”

Sheska watched. The Prime Minister was not present at breakfast on Monday morning, even though the black agenda confirmed the House didn’t meet til noon. But Sheska was more shocked when she noticed who else was missing from the table.

“Where’s Thunder, Lightning, Cyclone, and Black Hayate?”

“The Prime Minister took them to the park this morning,” Riza answered. Her tone betrayed no opinion on this favor whatsoever. “I think we’d better hurry and sample the Gala dessert menu before they return.”

On Wednesday, they were returning from a luncheon and found #5 blocked by another black car. The uniformed driver hurriedly stamped out his cigarette when he saw Riza approach.

“Hasn’t Mr. Mustang left for his cabinet meeting?” Riza asked, perplexed.

“Just returned, ma’am,” the driver corrected. “He had another meeting with Intelligence and wanted to be early. I’m just waiting to take Major General Gladdings back to Command when they’re finished.”

“‘Wanted to be early?’ Have we elected a new Prime Minister since I’ve been gone?” The driver chuckled at Riza’s dry snipe and doffed his hat to them as they headed towards the front door.

But the real turning point came on Friday evening, when the couple was expected at a charity fundraiser. With Dana too busy, Sheska was tasked by Nicholas with seeing her bosses to the ballroom and making sure the Prime Minister hadn’t left his speech cards in the car, as was his wont.

As Sheska took her coat, Riza looked out at the glittering room stuffed with politicians and board members, scouting. Her eyes went wide, then narrowed.

“ _Shi—_ ah, shame. They put the MacGruers at our table,” she muttered.

“So they did,” the Prime Minister said, elegantly taking her arm. “Alright, start coughing now and don’t stop til we reach our seats. Sniffle every time someone goes to shake your hand. I’ll announce you have a sore throat and do all of the talking for the evening.”

Riza looked up at her husband, and for a wild moment Sheska thought she would be witness to some kind of emotional declaration. Then the moment ended and the two of them moved on, Riza coughing loudly and with a startling level of realism.

When the Prime Minister appeared at breakfast the following Monday, dressing gown and all, it was clear that some kind of equilibrium had finally been restored.

“And he’s gone everywhere with all four guards, too,” Maria pointed out, defending her basket of chips from Sheska’s fingers. “Though we’ll see how long that lasts.”

“Until he leaves for Creta, I hope. The First Lady always does better in the tabloids when she’s not faking her good moods; I think the photographers have figured out which one’s her actual smile.” Sheska crossed her fingers. “If they can get along until September, and the press is kind, Vivian Oglinski might actually bring in champagne.”

“Then here’s hoping for a happy couple,” Maria said, raising her glass, and inadvertently giving Sheska an opening to swipe the whole basket.

 

* * *

 

She didn’t tell anyone about her and Maria.

There wasn’t much to tell. They had dinner or lunch together a few times a week, but not regularly, and never anywhere fancy enough for a proper date. Not that Maria had even asked her on a date—nor Sheska her. They discussed work and office gossip, but sometimes books too, or radio shows, or their neighbors, or their families. Sheska spent one of her precious few days off digging through her apartment until she found her mother’s old photo album; Maria laughed so hard at ten-year-old Sheska’s first milking attempt gone awry that she had to wipe away tears.

“You have to join the PM’s crew the next time he visits Xing,” Maria kept insisting. “The First Lady usually goes with him because the Emperor likes her, and when you’re off-duty there it’s basically a vacation! I want to see your face the first time you try real _baozi.”_

But that wasn’t the same as saying, _I want you to come with me._

They had to be different people at work, too. Sheska couldn’t visit Security in the basement on a whim. Maria couldn’t appear on the fifth floor without a reason. For all her scoffing at his antics, Maria was always on her best behavior around the Prime Minister. On one occasion, Sheska heard him praise Security’s efforts in corralling spectators at a holiday parade, and Maria practically glowed with pride. Though she told many stories about her exile in Xing, nothing made Maria’s eyes light up like telling stories of building the Eastern Continental Railroad, of working fourteen hours a day in the desert sun as the official translator for Brigadier General Roy Mustang. She clearly cared a great deal about earning his respect.

And Sheska cared about earning the First Lady’s. Six months to the date of her first day as an assistant, Riza greeted her at breakfast and paused.

“You know, you’ve been wearing brighter colors than you used to, Sheska,” she said.

Sheska blushed. “Oh, uh, really? I mean—if it’s not too much—do I look too—?”

“You look lovely.” Riza’s voice brokered no arguments. “And I’ve always liked the way you style your hair.”

The idea of the Prime Minister waking up before oh-six-hundred to take the dogs out wasn’t so ludicrous anymore; being in Riza’s good graces was a good place to be.

If Sheska fell from those graces, if Riza didn’t approve… There would be ramifications, surely, to dating another person on the Prime Minister’s staff. Ramifications to dating Maria Ross, Head of Security, specifically.

So she didn’t tell anyone about them, about—well, whatever they were. Weren’t. Could not be.

 

* * *

 

Sheska’s assignments of late were beginning to resemble her old routine at the court-martial office: read a few books, boil them down to the most pertinent information, and copy that down for someone else to review. Only this time, her reading material wasn’t centered on military crimes, but on Creta. As the radio kept saying, _“Cretan fever is sweeping the nation!”_

“Whoever came up with that tagline doesn’t have to memorize their whole economic system,” Harry moaned.

Five years ago it was everything Xingese: clothes, food, furniture, art. You couldn’t walk through the east side of Central without passing at least three new import shops on every block. The trains on Roy Mustang’s railroad left the border piled with Amestrian coal and steel, and returned with Xingese oil, silk, salt, spices, and a wave of immigration. The photograph of Fuhrer Grumman shaking the young Emperor’s hand was on the cover of every paper in the country. _OUT WITH WAR, IN WITH TRADE,_ they all praised.

Now, thanks to the peace summit, it was their western neighbor’s turn in the spotlight. But “Cretan fever” wasn’t too catching yet; Pendleton was still riddled with bullet holes, war vets were still shelling out their government stipends for automail. There was only one Cretan restaurant in Sheska’s neighborhood, and the peace summit didn’t stop someone from smashing their windows.

“Do some research on the country and compose a few reports for me,” was Riza’s request. “You can leave out anything on the language; if ten years hasn’t improved my Xingese, I doubt a month will do anything for my Cretan.”

Riza had already read all of the official cultural briefs that the Prime Minister had, so Sheska took her lunch break at the library and checked out a wider variety of sources. Cookbooks, folk costume plates, history textbooks, myths and legends—she chiseled out the touchstones of understanding the nation into a neat document she was quite proud of.

Riza finished that report in about five minutes, and all but tossed it aside. “Actually, I was thinking more about geography. Wildlife. The state of infrastructure. Climate and weather.”

“Right, ma’am.” Sheska took the report back, resisting the urge to smooth its wrinkled corners. “I-I’ll try again.”

Her second report didn’t fare much better than the first. Nor the third. The librarian asked if she was a university student when Sheska came to the desk with every volume she could find on Creta’s ocean tides, seafaring, and shipbuilding. Worse, another staffer asked her the same question when she returned the next day, after Riza had only cared about Creta’s strange giant sea fish with teeth.

“Do I really look eighteen?” she asked Maria morosely. They were splitting a tin of biscuits, hiding out in one of the third floor conference rooms. Sheska tried to disguise how her shoulders tensed every time footsteps passed by the door.

“I don’t think they were trying to be mean, or blind,” Maria chuckled. “You don’t have to be young to go to university, you know. They probably thought you’re trying for your doctorate.”

“Ha! Maybe the First Lady is trying for hers.” Sheska bit her biscuit in half with perhaps more force than necessary. “Maybe she’s having me write her dissertation now. Otherwise I don’t see why I’m getting paid to read so many books on venomous snakes of the Cretan highlands for someone who isn’t even going to Creta.”

“You’re her personal assistant,” Maria shrugged. “If anyone would know her reasons, wouldn’t it be you?”

Sheska didn’t know how to explain how wrong she was. At least Harry and Dana understood.

“It’s not just the First Lady—both Mustangs play their cards close. They don’t let anyone in on their methods unless you’ve hit the five-year employment mark, or you do serious detective work. I mean, look at me!” Harry fanned his face with his hat, hair stuck up at all angles thanks to the hot August evening, as they waited together at the tram stop. “I pick out the PM’s cologne for him, pen nearly every word that comes out of his mouth, and I’m still not allowed in the library!”

“You know, I did catch Nicholas sneaking in there once,” Dana confided. “He _claimed_ he was only leaving documents on the desk because the PM kept ignoring them everywhere else. He looked plenty guilty to me though.”

“Did you see the inside when you caught him?” Harry leaned in, eager.

“For a second. Just bookshelves, a desk, and a leather couch.” Dana paused to think. “Hey—d’you think the PM’s banned everyone just so he can nap in there?”

Sheska left them to ponder the forbidden library as her tram had arrived, and she heaved in all twelve books Riza had wanted, and then not wanted, on the lives of Cretan mountain goats.

 

* * *

 

Riza could be hard to read, but it was always easy to tell when she was irritated. Whenever the car pulled up outside the Rosebud Country Club, for instance.

“Which one is it today, Sheska?”

“Central District Women’s Group for Animals in Need.”

“Joy.”

Sheska didn’t like luncheons either. She was usually allowed to skip them and work in the office while Sam and Lou took Riza to whichever fine restaurant the Parliament wives had selected that day. Riza rarely left in a good mood and typically returned in a worse one. Today, however, they’d discovered a mistake in the caterer’s numbers and there was no time to solve it before Riza was due at the Rosebud, so Sheska dumped everything into her briefcase and jumped in the car so they could sort it out directly afterward.

The Central District Women’s Group for Animals in Need had the same regulars as every other organization the Parliament wives led. Most of them typically ignored Sheska in the same way they ignored the waitstaff. Old Mrs. Baines, though, smiled and waved to her as she took a chair in the corner of the dining room to work.

“How do you do, Sheila?”

“Very well, ma’am, thank you.” It was no use correcting Mrs. Baines; she was far too sweet and too deaf.

Sheska observed Riza’s table as the salads were served. Riza was seated next to Mrs. Wilcox, whose husband was in the same party as the Prime Minister. There was Mrs. Cartwright, fiddling with her pearls; Mrs. Young, smearing only the thinnest layer of butter over her roll; Mrs. Gerrig, telling yet another story about her eldest daughter; Mrs. Armstrong, not listening to it; Mrs. Kness, having her water refilled; and next to her—

“Sadie, I should think it’s obvious!” There was no escape from the shrill, sugary voice of Francine MacGruer. “Your daughter is infatuated with that paperboy! Why else would a young lady rise before dawn just to fetch the Sunday edition?”

Laughs tittered around the table, but Mrs. Gerrig looked stricken.

“Do you really think so?” She wrung her hands. “No, it can’t be! The reason I sent Amelia to Gracewood Academy was to find someone from…someone from a proper family, you know. She’s nearly seventeen, and I want to settle things for her in advance. I can’t imagine she would go to such lengths to hide a beau from me!”

“Now, young girls have gone to far greater lengths to have a little rebellion,” Mrs. MacGruer soothed. “Amelia is only in a phase! All you have to do is be a little more vigilant and a little more heavy-handed to lead her through it. A girl can’t meet boys from proper families on her own; have you introduced her to any of the Suttons? I’m great friends with Jeanne-Marie, I can telephone and tell her to bring her Michael to—”

“What’s not ‘proper’ about the paperboy’s family?”

Sheska’s pen stilled. All heads turned to Riza.

“Well,” Mrs. Gerrig said, lipstick smearing on her teeth as she chewed her lip. “Well, of course they’re good people, I’m sure. He’s a hard worker, and a fine boy, but they’re—his family is—Ahmed’s family is from the East. The southern part of the East.”

She left the name in the air for everyone to draw a map with.

“Ah.” Riza dug her fork into her salad, the tines clinking against the china. “You don’t have to worry at all in that case, Sadie. I know two very fine boys from the East myself. Yes, they were born in a poor town, but they’ve done quite well for themselves. One married a Xingese princess, in fact.” She raised her fork to her lips. “Of course, your Amelia isn’t a princess, but I’m sure Ahmed’s family would still accept her.” And bit.

Riza continued to eat her salad as the rest of the table sat stunned and silent.

 _Please, ma’am,_ Sheska thought, gnawing on the end of her pen as she stole a glance at Mrs. MacGruer, who had smoothed over her glower quickly as the waitstaff came around with the soup course. _I want to make it out of here in one piece._

Mrs. Armstong boldly seized the reins of the conversation and steered it toward her own daughters, who were apparently taking on the family tradition of managing a theatre troupe. Riza resumed her typical silence as the topic drifted from theatre to arts committees to legacies to children again.

“Petra Lisowski told me that she’s expecting a third grandchild soon,” Mrs. Cartwright gushed. “Oh, I wish my daughter-in-law would hurry along! But she’s so vain about losing her figure!”

“I wish _my_ daughter-in-law would slow down,” Mrs. Young huffed. “There’s no doubt she’ll wheedle my son into hiring another nanny; the current one can hardly handle their first two.”

“And what about you, Riza?”

Riza looked up, shaken from her apparent reverie, and blinked at Mrs. MacGruer. “Pardon?”

Her smile was bright and predatory. “Are you in a hurry to have a family or not? Everyone thought during the campaign that you must be due soon, with how quickly you walked down the aisle, but it’s been two years and still no sign that Amestris’ head family will get any larger. You might want to make use of your husband before he leaves the country next month. You aren’t getting any younger!”

All eyes around the table flicked back and forth between the two women, cups stopped halfway to lips, utensils dangling between fingers, plates forgotten. Sheska hardly knew what to feel. She bit her tongue, knuckles white on the edge of her clipboard. A lifetime of reading books and she couldn’t even put her fury into proper words.

But Riza’s face remained as placid as ever.

“You’ve seen my house, Francine,” she said. “Where on earth would we put a nursery—next to Foreign Affairs? We lose enough sleep as it is. No need to add an infant to the mix. When my husband wins the reelection, though, I may be able to sway him into getting another dog.”

Mrs. MacGruer’s smile faltered only for a moment. But it was long enough of a moment to make it clear who had won.

Sheska still gnawed her pen through dessert.

 

* * *

 

Riza’s placidity dropped the moment they got in the car.

“Pull over at the opposite end of our street, please,” she ordered the driver. “I’d like to walk. I’ve been inside enough today.”

Sheska scrambled out of the car after her and the guards when they stopped at Arbor Park. Though #5 Cherrywood Street was hardly five minutes away, Sheska was sweating within seconds as the afternoon sun glared high and merciless overhead. Riza’s marching pace did not alter. Small billows of dust from the brick trailed behind her shoes.

Thankfully, it was cooler on the tree-lined path that wound towards the other end of Cherrywood Street. The park was deserted; they were the only residents brave enough to face the heat. Sheska was juggling her briefcase in one arm, trying to dig out a handkerchief to wipe her face with, when Riza suddenly said,

“He was thirty-eight.”

Silence. “…Ma’am?” Sheska prodded tentatively.

“The Prime Minister was thirty-eight during the campaign, but he was ‘too young’ for the premier office. Everyone said so, even though Bradley was forty when he became Fuhrer and no one batted an eye. Now—” Sam moved to open the iron gate at the edge of the park, but Riza beat him to it, yanking it open and ignoring the clang the bars made when they collided, “—Now I’m thirty-seven, but I’m ‘too old’ to be anything but someone’s mother.”

She didn’t say anything else as they left the park, crossed the street, and entered through the front door. It wasn’t until they were in the lift alone—Sam and Lou, both sweating profusely, were excused to clean up—that Riza spoke up again.

“I don’t know how Clarisse Knight did it.” She let out a deep breath. “Maybe she was used to it, as an actress. Becoming whatever person they want to see.”

It was strange: a personal admission that was only marginally personal. But Sheska suddenly had the urge to grasp Riza by the arm, to reassure her, to tell her something—tell her everything.

She imagined turning and saying, _I know what you mean. I know what it’s like to be yourself and still not be enough. I know, I know, and what you don’t know is that I’m acting too, in front of you even. I don’t want children either, for different reasons, maybe, than you don’t want them, but I’m not brave enough to even say that much. I wasn’t brave enough to tell my mother Maisie wasn’t just my roommate. Maybe all of us are acting, in one way or another. It’s still unfair. I know._

She had barely opened her mouth when the lift doors chimed and opened—revealing the Prime Minister and his team.

“And so the queen returns to the castle,” he announced airily, accepting his coat from Nicholas. “Unusually late.”

“The car arrived on time, but we went through the park,” Riza said as she stepped out of the lift.

“Oh? So _some_ of us are allowed to walk home whenever we please?”

“The park is hardly two blocks wide. My guards were present.”

The Prime Minister looked like he was about to make another jab, but then his joking expression slipped. He looked at his wife, frowning. Her expression didn’t change at all. She stepped neatly around him, weaving between Nicholas and one of his guards.

The Prime Minister started, “Riza, what ha—”

“The Department of Agriculture presents in half an hour,” she called back without turning around. “Don’t keep them waiting. Sheska?”

“Coming, ma’am,” Sheska said and hurried after her, feeling too hot, too timid, and too unwelcome to say anything further.

 

* * *

 

On Thursday morning, Gwendolyn from the Treasury cornered Sheska and demanded she join her and a few other clerks for drinks that evening.

“I’ve already taught you the West City Strut,” she insisted, holding Sheska’s clipboard hostage, “so you’ve got to go out and actually dance it!”

“Well,” Sheska said, hesitant, “maybe next weekend…” Gwendolyn shook her head.

“I know next weekend is that big gala for the MPs, Sheska, you can’t fool me! There’s a Ladies' Night at The Triple-Star Bar on Thursdays. Half-price beer, unlimited gin rickeys if my friend Sonya flirts with the bartender.” She stole the pencil behind Sheska’s ear to scrawl down the address. “The band’s on at nine. Wear something scandalous!”

It was the first time Sheska ever hoped to stay late. But Riza’s efficiency was in peak form that day, and sure enough, she was home with plenty of time to spare. Nothing she owned could be deemed even remotely “scandalous.” She fished out her heels and—after waffling over the choice until she had only half an hour to spare—decided this was as good a time as any to wear the peach blouse from Lucy Harris.

She found Gwendolyn in the bar without much trouble; she was standing on her chair and waving both arms over her head, cries of _“Sheska! Sheska! Over here!”_ carrying over the din. Gwendolyn’s lipstick matched her short cherry red frock, and she ignored the whistles from the men eyeing her legs as she hopped down.

“You’ve met most of the Treasury staff already, I’m sure,” she said, pulling Sheska to the table. “Violet, Cara, Sonya?” The girls waved to her. “And Alice from the court-martial office.”

Sheska felt the knot in her stomach loosen a little. “Oh, Alice!” she said, smiling at the one familiar face. “I didn’t recognize you! You cut your hair!”

“That’s alright. I’m still not used to it myself,” Alice said, timidly combing her fingers through her fringe. “And it’s been a while since you last stopped by Command, anyway.”

“Far too long,” Gwendolyn agreed. “We have to catch up! Alice, scoot over, let Sheska in!”

So Sheska found herself sandwiched between Alice and Violet, Cara saving Gwendolyn and Sonya’s chairs while they went to the bar in pursuit of the lovelorn bartender. She managed to survive smalltalk with the three of them until the other two returned. Sonya proudly set down a whole tray of gin rickeys that she assured them were on the house.

“That Nathan—he’s cute, but a total chump,” she laughed, blotting her lipstick on a napkin. “He thinks that if he throws enough free liquor at me, eventually I’ll leave my beau for him.”

“Not a baseless assumption,” Violet quipped, and yelped when Sonya’s balled-up napkin bounced off her nose. “Hey! You left Gerry for that guy with the new car!”

“And then you left the car guy for the one from the jewelry store,” Cara chimed in.

“And Mr. Jewelry Store got dumped for Theo,” Alice added.

“And Theo is the one for me!” Sonya huffed. “Some friends you are! You’d leave Gerry too if you had to take a horse-cart every time you went out!”

“Alright, everyone,” Gwendolyn said over the giggles, “go ‘round the table! Name the richest man you’d leave a beau for!”

 _Oh no._ Sheska wracked her brain. She had to know some man reasonably handsome enough to pass, didn’t she? But every face that came to mind was either an author who’d been dead for centuries, or the old stage actors on her mother’s favorite radio serials. Could she say Colonel Alex Louis Armstrong? Was that too obvious? Or too unlikely?

She clutched fistfuls of her skirt while the Treasury clerks went around, trying to summon some kind of confidence, when Violet’s mouth curled into a cunning grin as she said, “For me? Easy. Roy Mustang.”

The whole table crowed. Violet only grinned wider.

“You’re full of shit,” Cara cackled. “You only go for baby-faced guys you can boss around! The PM’s almost forty!”

“‘Almost forty’ isn’t forty,” Violet retorted, “and who says he wouldn’t like being bossed around? He was a soldier once.” She waggled her eyebrows. “Even generals like to follow orders now and then.”

She shrieked and batted away the flurry of napkins the others fired at her.

“Well we’ve got someone here with a firsthand account,” Gwendolyn proposed. “Sheska, you know the PM best: do you think Violet stands a chance?”

“I—well—I don’t know him _that_ well,” Sheska mumbled, blushing under their full attention. “I guess the First Lady does boss him around, kind of, but…” The lockdown incident was still fresh in her memory. “He definitely doesn’t listen every time.”

“Tough luck, Vi,” Cara said. “You could never handle a wildcard. Besides, you’d have to compete with the likes of Elaine Zhao. Now _there’s_ a woman who knows how to upgrade from one beau to a richer one!”

“What about the First Lady? I heard she was Bradley’s assistant too.” Gwendolyn smirked. “I’d have gone over forty for Bradley.”

“Do you think the First Lady will take advantage of the peace summit next month?” Violet nudged Sheska. “The PM will be in Creta, after all! A woman alone, her husband in a foreign country, lots of offices to have a secret tryst in…”

Sheska sputtered on her drink. “I doubt it,” she managed to say, half-laughing, half-coughing. “Someone would have to make a move on her first. And she’s not, uh, easily charmed.”

“She’s terrifying,” Alice spoke up in agreement. “I misplaced a ledger once that she reserved for the Colonel—well, the PM when he was a colonel, that is. Would you believe, she came to the court-martial office to find it herself! I thought she’d have me turned out on the spot, but she just hunted until we finally dug it up and warned me to be more careful from now on. Gave me such a look as she left.” She faked a shiver. “You’re so brave to take your post, Sheska.”

“She’s not all that bad—” Sheska started, but the bar began to cheer as the band stepped onstage, instruments held at the ready. The Treasury clerks all shrieked and jumped to their feet, pulling Sheska to the dance floor as the first number began.

And despite her earlier worries, it was fun. The band was good, the dancers were friendly, and Sonya kept bringing back tray after tray of free gin rickeys. Sheska felt warm and loose-limbed as she danced with Alice, giggling whenever Alice’s new bob brushed against her nose as they twirled.

“You’re so much fun, Sheska,” Alice said, grinning. “How come you haven’t been out with us before?”

“Because all I ever do is work,” Sheska groaned. Alice started to say something else, but Sheska gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Hold on—Sonya’s got more drinks!”

As she hurried back towards their table, her shoe slipped in some unknown puddle on the floor. She stumbled, but Gwendolyn managed to grab her elbow and steady her before she went down.

“Whoa there, don’t crash!” she laughed. “Oh, look at Alice, she’s furious with me now.”

“What? Why?” Sheska frowned, wobbling to regain her balance. “Alice is so nice, she’d never be mad at anyone!”

“I think she wanted to catch you herself.” Gwendolyn stuck out her tongue over Sheska’s shoulder. “Not my fault that she can’t flirt properly.”

The warm feeling in Sheska’s limbs sapped away. She gripped Gwendolyn’s shoulder.

“Alice,” she said, running over each word in her head like pieces in a puzzle she’d just discovered fit together, “was flirting with me? Just now?”

Gwendolyn looked at her—and laughed loud enough to startle the dancers around them.

“Sheska,” she wheezed, “Alice has been flirting with you for _months!”_

“She…” It was extremely hard to control her mouth all of a sudden. It didn’t seem to want to form words. “She what?”

“She’s been trying to ask you out since May, but she’s been such a baby about it. Kept asking if you wanted to sit down for a cup of coffee when you were sent to Command on errands, as if everyone at #5 doesn’t have four before noon. Then she left her phone number in some files you requested, but with the amount of paperwork that goes through the PM’s office I wasn’t surprised that you didn’t notice it. I told her this week that if she could finally toughen up, I’d get you to come out with us so she could ask you properly.” Gwendolyn rolled her eyes. “I can’t stand girls who won’t make a move.”

“I…I…” Sheska’s tongue felt very dry. “I’m sorry, I really had no idea.”

“I figured you didn’t. I started that whole rich beau game just to get her to admit she’d pick Catherine Elle Armstrong, so you could get the hint!” Gwendolyn put her hands on her hips. “Well? Has she asked you yet?”

Sheska shook her head. The movement made her feel dizzy. The dancers swam in and out, the swirling hems of ladies’ frocks blending together as the band played on. She tightened her hold on Gwendolyn, leaning against her shoulder for balance.

“Hmm. Then how ‘bout I hurry her along?”

Gwendolyn rose to her tiptoes, her other hand curled around Sheska’s waist, and kissed the corner of Sheska’s mouth.

Swirling colors, rattling cymbals, screeching horns, Gwendolyn’s perfume, her cherry red lips in a catlike grin, hot cold hot cold and everything spinning, the taste of gin on Sheska’s tongue, snaking up her throat—

“Sheska? You okay?”

“I think I should call it a night,” Sheska croaked, and fled to the lavatory as fast as her heels allowed.

 

* * *

 

Never before had Sheska felt such profound hatred for sunlight.

It streamed through the gap in the curtains and fell exactly in her eyes—when she finally managed to open them. Her whole head throbbed as she groped for her glasses on the bedside table, only narrowly avoiding knocking over one of the many stacks of books that made their home there. A glass of water sat precariously at the top. At least some responsible part of her brain had still been functioning last night, it seemed.

She retrieved her blouse and skirt from the wrinkled pile on the floor and hung them back in the closet, kicking her heels aside. Her handbag had fallen over and spilled a mountain of mints onto the carpet; she had some vague memory of Cara insisting she take them before getting into the cab. She had an even vaguer memory of Alice paying the driver for her, waving worriedly as the automobile pulled away.

_“Alice has been flirting with you for months!”_

She’d have to turn Alice down. Her stomach clenched at the thought of making Alice—sweet, friendly, blue-eyed Alice—upset. It certainly wasn’t her fault that Sheska hadn’t noticed, if even Gwendolyn could tell. It wasn’t her fault that Sheska already liked someone else.

_“I can’t stand girls who won’t make a move.”_

But…what if she didn’t turn Alice down? What if Alice asked her on a date and Sheska said yes? Gwendolyn had proof that Alice liked her. Gwendolyn had proof that Alice had the intention of doing something about it. Central Command was downtown. Alice and other clerks delivered files to the Prime Minister’s office on occasion, but they worked separately from Parliament, under the military. There wouldn’t be any conflict. Alice was cute, sure. Sheska didn’t know her too well, but that could change. It could be easy. It could be safe.

Sheska rolled back onto her bed, seized her pillow, and screamed into it.

 _Okay, enough,_ she scolded herself, rubbing her temples. _You can’t think about this now. You have to get up, find the headache powder, take a shower, and catch the tram_. _You have to get to work. The First Lady is probably up and ready by now. She can do her entire routine in half an hour because she doesn’t go out on Thursday nights, and she doesn’t fret about dating or not-dating Maria Ross, and she doesn’t waste her mornings cursing at the sunlight._

The sunlight?

Sheska flung the pillow off her face, bolting upright. She knocked the stack of books from the bedside table, not caring when they fell limply to the floor, spines splayed open. She dug out her alarm clock and stared, open-mouthed, at the face.

It was half-past ten.

She was four hours late to work.

 

* * *

 

She got stares from other passengers on the tram, but she couldn’t blame them. Her cardigan was buttoned askew. Her hair felt like a bush. Somehow her loafers had vanished in the night, and she spent most of the commute trying to button up her old boots properly. The second the tram doors opened at the Cherrywood Street stop she seized her briefcase and practically flew to the front door of #5.

“Can I help y—Sheska?!”

“Hi, Stan!” She rammed the door open with her shoulder. “Sorry, Stan!”

She shoved her briefcase under the check-in guard’s nose for a second before racing to the lift, jamming the button repeatedly with her finger until the doors finally shut. The slow ride to the fourth floor was agonizing. Her blouse was stuck to her back with sweat.

The bell chimed, and she ran across the hall to the office door and—

It was quiet.

Not silent—about half the desks were still occupied, telephones and typewriters in full swing—but far less loud than Sheska had ever known the office to be at eleven-hundred hours on a weekday. Neither Harry nor Dana were at their desks, and several others had vanished with them.

 _On early lunch break, probably,_ she thought, dumping her briefcase on her own desk and looking at the size of her inbox pile with alarm. _Thank god; I’ll be able to make myself look decent before they get back._

“Sheska! Hey!”

She whipped around to face Kain Fuery. She tried to temper her labored breathing as he looked her up and down, eyes widening as he did.

“Uh…” He scratched his head. “Did…something happen? You didn’t call in. And you’ve got, uh…” He gestured at her face. Sheska felt her cheeks turn redder, if that were even possible.

“I’m going to clean up,” she vowed, “but I thought I should check in with the First Lady before I did. She’s got a meeting with the director of the Children’s—”

“No, no, she already—” Kain jumped when one of his many phones began ringing. He looked between it and Sheska, torn. “Look, I have to take this, but listen, I need you to bring—” he took her arm and pulled her with him back to his desk, then handed her a stack of envelopes, “— _these_ to the PM, upstairs. Harry and Dana are out running damage control, and of course Nicholas is never where I need him. Half of these just came in from the Fuhrer’s office, and if this morning is anything to judge by, they’re urgent.”

“But I don’t—but I need to—”

“You can go to the First Lady directly afterward,” Kain barked, sliding over the top of his desk to land on the other side. “Go!” He picked up the ringing phone in one hand and a pad of paper in the other. “Communications, Fuery. Thank god, Breda, I’ve been waiting all morning…”

 _Okay, fine._ Sheska passed the lift and took the stairs this time, to avoid more stares. _First: find the PM and shove these at him. Then: find Riza and beg for forgiveness. Third: get through this day with some dignity intact. Fourth: go home and cry and never, ever have fun again._

But there was a wrench in her plans—she could find neither Mustang on the fifth floor. She checked each room one-by-one, but all were deserted. Strangest of all, not even the dogs or guards could be found. Sheska was starting to panic. She had all of Riza’s schedule memorized for the next two weeks. She wasn’t supposed to leave the building for another few hours that day. Was she on a lower floor? Kain had specified upstairs, but maybe he was only referring to the Prime Minister. Because the only place left to look was…

The library.

Sheska stood in front of the door biting her lip, the urgent envelopes clenched in her hands. Rumor had it that the Prime Minister was so adamant on the privacy of the library that he used to seal the lock the alchemy, until the First Lady insisted that was a fire hazard. Now the lock was an ordinary one, but the door was always shut, and it had only one key, and that key was on his person at all times. Sheska had never seen anyone else go inside.

But, supposedly, Dana had seen Nicholas.

She closed her eyes and ran through the idea, looking for holes in the logic. If the Prime Minister was at home, he had no reason to lock the library door. If he was inside, then Sheska would be in trouble, but the envelopes and their urgency would excuse her from intruding. If he wasn’t inside, then he was still in the building and would doubtlessly return, and if he found the envelopes on his desk with no knowledge of who delivered them, Sheska wouldn’t have to excuse herself in the first place.

And if the door was locked, of course, no harm would be done at all. Sheska reached out and gently, carefully, tried the handle.

It turned.

 

* * *

 

At once she understood Harry’s curiosity about what lay behind the one door forbidden even to Clearance 5 staff. Roy Mustang’s library was a mid-size room—larger than the Green Room, but smaller than the Dining Room—but it had more decorative objects inside than the rest of the top floor put together. Massive twin Xingese porcelain vases; a hand-painted, wizened model globe on a tall stand; the leather couch draped with a crocheted afghan; a worn floor pillow and collection of dog toys scattered on the carpet. And books, hundreds of books, filling the shelves that ringed the room from wall to wall, leather bindings in every color of the rainbow.

Sheska eased the door open only wide enough for her to squeeze through and then shut it, pressing her hand against the edge to keep it from creaking. The carpet was thick, and she tiptoed noiselessly to the desk, still nervous in spite of her luck.

She lay the envelopes in the very center of the desk blotter, where they couldn’t be mixed up with the others that were scattered on one side, many postmarked from a university in Xing. There was a folded manuscript beneath them, heavily dog-eared and annotated in the Prime Minister’s narrow script. One paragraph had been circled and marked, _Brilliant. Don’t tell your brother, but I always you knew were the better theorist. …Actually, do tell him._ Several alchemy texts were piled next to it, bookmark scraps of paper sticking out like blunt teeth from the text block.

Duty complete, Sheska should have turned and left. But on the other side of the desk, standing above the mess like the masts of a ship, were three framed photographs, turned to face the chair where the Prime Minister would sit. Her hand hovered over them, her eyes roving over the black velvet backings. She shouldn’t. This room was off-limits for a reason.

But…but it bothered Sheska, that after so long, she still didn’t know the Mustangs’ reasons.

One by one, she turned the frames around.

The first was the oldest. A pretty, dark-haired woman sat on a stoop, wearing on a stern face and a don’t-screw-with-me hunch. Next to her sat a little boy mimicking her pose and expression exactly, but his tiny glare was offset by his too-big jumper and mismatched socks. There was no other resemblance between the two, but it was clear that the boy was a young Roy Mustang. _The Boss & The Muscle - Jasper’s Pub, Central ‘92_ was penned in the corner.

The second made Sheska smile and ache all at once. _Graduation 1905_ brought her, for the first time in many years, face-to-face with Maes Hughes. The Prime Minister’s expression here looked like much more of an earnest attempt at seriousness, but Hughes grinning behind him made his glower about as effective as the little boy’s. Sheska was careful not to leave fingerprints on the glass.

The third frame was the largest and most grand, heavy brass polished to shine like gold. Sheska expected another version of the Prime Minister and some close friend to occupy it. She picked it up, but found only one figure: a woman in a wedding gown. Riza’s bridal portrait.

None of the papers had managed to get photos of their wedding. Sheska found herself surprised that this single portrait even existed. Riza’s gown was slimmer and more modest than what was in fashion. Aside from her jewelry, there were no beads or lace to be found; even her veil was unadorned tulle. She didn’t carry any flowers, didn’t stand in front of the lavish backdrops they used in studios, didn’t even look very posed. Her head was turned to the side, as if someone had called her name just before the shutter snapped. The barest hint of a smile pulled at the corner of her mouth.

Sheska was about to set it down when she noticed a square of paper tucked into the corner of the frame. It came easily loose. She unfolded it to reveal a childish script on old, spotted white paper:

 _Miss H._  
_Here is the print, like I promised.  
_ _See—your eyes weren’t closed!_

She flipped it over. A girl of about ten stared keenly back at her. She was sitting in a parlor chair, her dangling feet hardly brushing the carpet. The photograph was faded and worn white at the creases, cutting a line through the girl’s knees. There was no date, but the clothes were clearly of the last century, the pinafore and drooping hair ribbon staples of Sheska’s own childhood. She examined the back once more, but with no photographer’s seal and no other note, there was no way of knowing who sent young Riza Hawkeye a photograph of herself.

It fell from her hand when she heard a noise at the door.

Immediately Sheska flew to the window and ducked behind the heavy curtains, yanking them shut. Dust whirled around her. She clamped her hands over her nose, eyes watering, fighting back the urge to sneeze. She tried to think, tried to remember what the Prime Minister’s schedule was, surely he didn’t have enough free time to stay in the library long, but all her brain could do was run through an endless loop of _Oh god oh god oh god._

“What would you have me do?” The door creaked as it opened and heavy footsteps punctuated the Prime Minister’s voice. “It’s taken years to put this summit together, now in hardly twelve hours it’s hanging by a thread! I was lucky the Chancellor even agreed to speak to me. We are in no place to negotiate; either I go, my refusal to grovel sets relations with Creta back another ten years.”

 _“You_ should not be the one groveling.” Sheska just barely stopped herself from flinching. Riza sounded very close; she must be just in front of curtains, hardly inches from Sheska’s hiding place. “This should be Grumman’s problem.”

The Prime Minister’s laugh was bitter and short. “Of course it _should_ be Grumman’s problem, but what good would his scraping and bowing do? The Blue Party and the brass are already angling to push Teghan into the Fuhrer’s seat before my term is up; they think Grumman hasn’t thought enough of his own country. They want to go back to the Bradley days, to isolationism and Amestrian victor’s pride. If Grumman stoops before Creta, he loses any standing he has left with the Blues and the military. And if Grumman’s not in their favor, I may as well be a lame duck candidate next election.”

“Could you stop looking so far ahead for once?” Anger was starting to bleed into Riza’s tone. “What will you do if going early isn’t enough? What if they don’t think you’re sincere? What if they want to retaliate? What if—”

“What if lightning strikes the embassy? There’s no point in listing every possible disaster.”

“I am being practical.”

“You’re being paranoid.”

“And what if I am!” Riza's voice rose as she moved away. Sheska took one of her hands from her mouth but still held her breath. Carefully, she parted the curtains, leaving an opening barely as wide as a fingertip. The Prime Minister was leaning on one arm of the couch, dressed but unshaven, his eyes lined and tired. Riza, on the other hand, was still in a dressing gown. Something black peeked out from the edge of the robe, on the back of her neck—perhaps lace edging on her nightclothes? Sheska could only see her from behind, and still it was jarring to see the First Lady undressed, unprepared. “One of us should be!”

“We have already discussed—”

“That it’s pointless for me to go everywhere with you. Yes, I understand, Roy, I’m not a child. But thus far you’ve done nothing to prove to me that I made the right choice, surrendering that. How can I stop being paranoid, when you still act like you’re bulletproof! And—and yes, I’m sure it’s hard for you, because adjusting to this hasn’t been—hasn’t been easy for me either, but—” Riza’s words became quieter and quieter, as if she were trying to say them all before her speech ran dry, “—but if something happens, and I can’t be there, and I have no way of knowing if you—if you’re—”

Sheska suddenly had enough of the conversation. She wished for nothing more than to close her eyes and evaporate from the room. She thought of covering her ears to try and block the rest, but then she might miss the sound of the door when the Mustangs finally left. Or…what if this went on all day? Her legs were already sore from trying to stand so still. She leaned back, hoping she could lean on the window seat slowly enough so as not to rustle the curtains. She clenched her jaw and tried to focus on the rush of blood in her ears instead of what was being said.

She sat down—and the window seat yelped.

The bottom dropped from Sheska’s stomach. She craned her head around. Old Black Hayate looked up at her, offended, still curled up where he’d been napping before she’d awoken him.

“Cyclone, if you’ve eaten another classified document I swear I’ll—”

The curtain was yanked aside, and there stood the Prime Minister. For a long, horrible moment, he and Sheska just stared at each other.

Then he said, in the coldest tone she had ever heard him use, “Sheska. This room is off-limits to staff.”

What choice did she have? Sheska stepped out, wringing her hands. Black Hayate jumped down after her and shook once before ambling over to Riza. She was standing by the couch now, wrapping her dressing gown more tightly around her and hurriedly knotting the sash, then crossing her arms over her chest. Sheska couldn’t tell what expression she was making, and didn’t want to know. She couldn’t bear to meet Riza’s eyes.

“I was—” Sheska cleared her throat, but couldn’t seem to make herself speak any louder than a murmur. “I was delivering something for you, sir. From the Fuhrer.” She untangled one of her hands from her white-knuckled grasp to gesture at the desk. “I couldn’t find you anywhere else on this floor. I was going to leave them, and then—”

“Why were you late this morning, Sheska?” Riza interrupted. The Prime Minister made as if to speak, but Riza raised one hand and he changed his mind.

Images swam in her head: the dancers, the gin glasses, Gwendolyn’s red lips, Alice’s hands in hers. “I fell ill last night and overslept this morning. I must have slept straight through the alarm. I know I should have called in, ma’am. I’m sorry.”

“Are you sure,” Riza said, each word chiseled from ice, “that is the answer you would like to give me?”

It was the only answer she could. “Y-yes.”

“I see.” Riza’s bare feet didn’t make any sound on the carpet as she crossed the room, but that was somehow more foreboding than if she stomped. “In case you haven’t turned on a radio this morning, Sheska, the drunken man who made an attempt on the House of Parliament a few weeks ago had some drunken friends in the Military Police. None of them are pleased with the direction our foreign policy is headed. So last night, they decided to take out their frustrations on a few Cretan tourists at a bar. One of those tourists happened to be the brother of the new Cretan ambassador.” Riza sniffed once, her arms still tightly crossed. “The Prime Minister will therefore be going to Thessakona one week earlier than expected, leaving the morning after the First Term Gala, to smooth things over before the peace summit.

“This has already hit the press. For the time being, the public is in favor of the Prime Minister’s choice. The military is not. My assignment for you this weekend is to track how those opinions may be trending in the coming days. Save your receipts and bring them on Monday to be reimbursed for the cost of whichever papers you pick up.”

Sheska had been fighting her headache all morning, but now her temples were nearly pounding. “Um, of course, ma’am. I’ll start tomorrow.”

“You may start now, if you’d like. You’re dismissed for the rest of the day.”

Sheska blinked. “But ma’am, at thirteen-hundred hours you have a—”

“I cleared my schedule myself this morning.” Again, the Prime Minister made as if to speak, but Riza turned her head and only looked at him briefly, and it was enough to quiet him. “You’re familiar with military regulations, Sheska. What would happen to a soldier if they failed an inspection?”

“They…would be disciplined, ma’am.”

“Correct. They would be sent away until they were fit to appear. If you say you are ill, and your illness has made you this tardy, then you are not fit to appear here this morning.”

Finally, Sheska looked up into Riza’s eyes. They were hard as stone.

“You are dismissed,” she said again, and uncrossed her arms at last so she could open the library door. “Go home.”

 

* * *

 

Somehow she managed to go downstairs, bundle up her briefcase, and leave the office without reacting. Somehow she managed to fend off all the curious looks from her co-workers and get to the elevator despite being pelted with questions. Somehow she got to the first floor, passed the queue at security, and still didn’t notice Maria until she was gripping her arm and turning her around.

“I called your name five times, Sheska, didn’t you hear me?” Maria’s hand relaxed when Sheska turned, but then Maria studied her face, her eyes narrowing, and suddenly she let go as if Sheska’s skin had burned her. “Oh. Well, I…I was going to ask…”

“I won’t be at lunch.” Sheska tried to speak around the lump in her throat. “I’m not feeling well. I’ll see you on Monday.”

Maria only nodded once, shoving her hands in her pockets. “Right,” she said. She turned and walked to the lift without any more of a goodbye.

At the tram stop, another man waited on the opposite end of the bench, clearly trying not to stare. Sheska made herself look busy by sorting aimlessly through her briefcase, but finally he waved a hand and said, “Excuse me, miss? You look familiar. PM’s office, right?”

“Not exactly,” she reluctantly replied, but that, unfortunately, was enough.

“No, wait, not PM’s office—aha! I’ve got it! You’re the First Lady’s assistant!” He smiled, ruddy mustache turning up at the ends.

Sheska made a weak attempt to return it. “I am.”

“I thought I recognized you! The girl with the glasses!” The man tapped his own with one finger. “Off work early today, eh? Funny, I’ve heard Major Hawkeye was always quite the tyrant in the office! Must’ve softened with age, I suppose. Or with marriage, as all lady soldiers do.” He winked. “Any truth to the rumors that she only took the ring so she’d have an excuse to resign?”

It was meant as a joke, Sheska knew. But it wasn’t funny.

“No,” she said firmly. “If the First Lady wanted an easier life after the military, then I don’t know why she got married in the first place.” She stood up, yanking the zipper on her briefcase closed. “Now excuse me, sir, but this is my tram.”

The man doffed his hat, still looking amused.

Somehow she climbed the metal step, paid her fare, and made it all the way to her seat before she noticed. It was the tram seat that did it, actually: the only spot left was one in the very back, next to the window. Sheska slumped into it and turned her head, out of habit, to glance back at Cherrywood Street as the tram departed.

Her reflection stared back at her, horrified, with last night’s red kiss mark still smudged at the corner of her mouth.

 

* * *

 

As instructed, Sheska kept the receipts for the tabloids she purchased. But she stopped reading them after she finished the cover story of Sunday’s _Capital Chatter._

 

**_DIPLOMACY OR DIVORCE?_ **

_CENTRAL, Aug. 26 —_ _As civilian unrest brews over the upcoming peace summit with Creta, marital unrest is brewing at #5 Cherrywood Street._ _So_ _urces say that the First Lady's need for control is souring relations between Amestris' leading pair._

_Infamous for her military precision on and off the battlefield, the First Lady is having trouble letting go of her stars and bars. Arguments arose when she objected to the PM's international travel plans, which don't include a ticket to Thessakona for her. The PM, however, hasn't forgotten he was once her commanding officer, and is so far standing strong against her demands._

_This isn't the first time lawyers have readied paperwork for Mustang v Mustang. Tensions were high last winter after the First Lady's disdain for a string of bills stalled in the House, and at near-breaking point this summer after her flippant response to the attempt on the PM's life. With the PM's departure date now pushed a week ahead of schedule, it looks like he may finally have had enough of women in blue._

_Not that he's alone in regretting a hasty engagement. "She wanted an easier life after the military," a source close to the First Lady confided. "I don’t know why she got married in the first place." Why indeed! Look out, ladies: Roy Mustang may soon be back on the market._

 

It'd been two days since her night out, but Sheska's heaving stomach said otherwise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am well aware that this photograph is ~5 years ahead of the timeline of this story. But time is a construct and FMA fashion is too, so [this is my Riza Hawkeye bridal portrait](https://thumbor.elle.ro/unsafe/1140x0/smart/http://www.glamour.ro/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/68465a36b90c1b50869e7f33f94_719918842_north_607x.jpg) and you can't stop me.
> 
> NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT FAKE GEOGRAPHY
> 
> Until I started writing a ~30k-word story about made-up politics, it didn’t really bother me that FMA never shows us a map of the whole continent, or even of the whole planet. BUT BOY IT SURE DOES WHEN YOU’RE TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHERE THE FRIGGIN BODIES OF WATER ARE!!!! I accepted the general consensus that Creta borders the sea on its southwest side, as [post-canon Ed is shown in official art with Cretan fishermen who’ve caught a shark that resembles a Great White.](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0a/5f/fd/0a5ffd6857f1e461fe150089942a85de.jpg) My take on Cretan language and culture is that it's based on Greek language and culture (“Creta” may also have been derived from the rl Greek island Crete, Arakawa can u confirm??). That Star of Milos movie (shhh I didn’t watch it but I did read the wiki) also describes Creta as a nation of separate tribes united economically, much like--drumroll--Greece was before 19th century nationalism!! 
> 
> As for Amestris itself, there has always been an eclectic mix of European names for both people and places, so I tried to reflect that in my names for people and places. Though the government system here is based off post-WWI Germany’s, I say culturally my Amestris would be more like a Austria/Hungary/Czechia/Slovakia smoothie: made of different naming traditions bc of all the smaller nations that were added to the larger whole over time. There’s some other random Irish in there too because why not.
> 
> “But what about Aerugo” Aerugo is Italian because of the southern location and because if I can never play the absurd Wii game where you rescue Prince Claudio, I can at least keep him canon here and drive Roy Mustang insane with the fact there is a fancy Italian hotshot prince he’s going to have to have dinner with at some point and the entire time this anime Fabio will be Italian-style seducing the shit out of Riza, who is having the absolute time of her life watching all of this happen. This is the only reason Aerugo does not feature in this work.
> 
> “But what about--” Xing is China and Drachma is Russian thank god those are just handled for me.
> 
>  
> 
> (Next update might be late like this one, as I am on vacation!)


	4. Sabine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am very hashtag blessed to link [this illustration by @Izilen](http://gilaniath.tumblr.com/post/174603179961/riza-hawkeye-popular-unofficial-first-lady) for this chapter!! <3

Handing Riza her resignation letter on top of the clipped article from _Capital Chatter_ without bursting into tears was, perhaps, the bravest thing Sheska had ever done.

“I am so sorry, ma’am,” was all she could bear to say as Riza scanned through them.

Riza didn’t reply. Her eyes narrowed at the article, the thin newsprint held to the light.

“That’s a direct quote from you, then? The source?”

“It’s—it’s not what exactly what I said. I was trying to defend you, and he took away the context. But the words are correct, yes,” Sheska admitted. “I didn’t even know I was speaking to a reporter. I should have been more careful. I just let my feelings get the better of me and I was so ashamed of myself that day—” Tears threatened to spill from her eyes, so Sheska shut them tight. “It won’t happen again. You were right, ma’am; I’m not fit to appear here, to represent you. I’m so, so sorry.”

She could hear the papers rustle, then a sigh.

“Come on.” There was a low whistle, and then collars jingled, tiny feet bounded over the carpet, and a wet nose pushed against Sheska’s leg. She opened her eyes to see Riza gathering a bundle of leashes from her desk drawer as the four dogs waited, tails wagging in anticipation. “It’s cool enough today that I think we can brave Rollings Park.”

 

* * *

 

Lightning, Thunder, and Cyclone bolted to the shores of the Rollings Park pond the second their leashes were unclipped from their collars, but Black Hayate chose to sit under the park bench, panting softly in the shade. Sam and Lou stood stalwartly behind them, jackets off but sunglasses on, scanning the lawn dotted with children flying kites and elderly couples out for a stroll. Riza accepted the favorite red rubber ball—tooth-marked and wet now with algae—from Cyclone and threw it in a neat arc, smiling softly as the dogs tore after it.

Then Riza said, as casually as if remarking on the weather, “When I was first assigned as adjutant to the Prime Minister—the Lieutenant Colonel, back then—I had just returned from Ishval, and I had just turned twenty-one.”

Sheska was unsure how to respond. Thunder began chasing a few ducks, until Lightning found the ball again and she could chase him instead.

“It was my first real job.” Riza scratched the crown of Black Hayate’s head. “No one was stamping timecards or counting overtime at the front. I had never worked in an office. Someone had to teach me how to change the ribbon on a typewriter. Every time the phone rang I got nervous, because it meant I had to answer it, and my hearing was still recovering from months of gunfire. I was terrified I would mishear something. I thought I would ruin the Lieutenant Colonel’s career simply by giving him the wrong name of who had called.”

Sheska was shocked. “You were that afraid of him, ma’am?”

Riza looked at her, eyebrows raised, and laughed.

“Oh, no!” she said, chuckling as she tossed the ball again. “No, I was afraid I would disappoint him.

“I thought I had to be perfect from the first. I never told him I had trouble hearing the phone or changing the typewriter ribbon. I arrived at Eastern Command before dawn for a few months to get started early, because I didn’t want him to think I couldn’t finish everything on time. It helped that the Lieutenant Colonel liked to stay late, so no one realized I stayed too just to catch up. Somehow all of it worked. For a while.”

“He found out?”

“He probably knew all along. But he finally made me stop when I broke my wrist.”

Sheska’s expression made Riza laugh again.

“It was very stupid.” She mimed holding a gun with her right hand. “I’d been having wrist pain for a while. It’s fairly common among soldiers, so I didn’t think much of it. One morning it hurt more than usual, but the Lieutenant Colonel had a meeting with the Eastern Command brass in the afternoon, so I decided against wrapping it. I went to the shooting range thinking my arm just needed exercise. I lined up my first shot, fired, and there—” She snapped her hand back. “The recoil. But I could still move my hand, so I thought, how bad could it be? I turned in my rifle and went to the meeting with the Lieutenant Colonel anyway.

“It went well, until I tried to hand him a pitcher of water and nearly screamed. There was no hiding it then. The Lieutenant Colonel ordered me to leave and go to the medic, and then after the meeting ended he drove me to the hospital. I received my first dressing-down from a CO while a nurse was putting me in a cast.

“I felt like a failure. I told him I’d accept his decision to demote me; I was waiting for him to say it. But here’s what he actually said.” Riza cleared her throat, and then put on an impression of the Prime Minister’s voice that was so spot-on that Black Hayate’s ears perked up. _“My problem with you isn’t that you broke your wrist. My problem is that your wrist might not have broken if you’d acknowledged it was sore. Does reassigning you solve that problem, Second Lieutenant?”_

Riza took the article and resignation letter from her skirt pocket and passed them back to Sheska.

“If you want to quit because you’re overworked, or overwhelmed, or just sick of me, Sheska, you may. But please don’t quit because you made one mistake and don’t know how else to fix it.”

“Ma’am—” Sheska started, and then the tears couldn’t be stopped. Riza said nothing, only reached for her handbag and passed her a handkerchief. Lightning bounded back over and whined when he saw Sheska, licking her knee as if he didn’t know how else to help. She stroked through his white fur until she found her voice again, pushing her glasses into her hair to wipe her eyes.

“I…I just want to know what I did, ma’am.”

“Hmm?”

“To impress you. To get hired. Back at Central Command, when I worked in the court-martial office, when we first met. I thought you must have remembered something I did that helped you, or helped the Prime Minister. I couldn’t figure out why else you hired me.”

Understanding dawned in Riza’s eyes. “I see,” she said. “I hope my answer doesn’t disappoint you, but my reasoning was simple: you’re a hard worker, and you have a spectacular mind for details. I needed that, because I have a hard time remembering my own schedule. I was always managing someone else’s.” The red ball arced over the pond. “In fact, the reason I decided to hire a personal assistant is very much related to how I broke my wrist: my husband insisted I stop trying to do everything by myself.”

Sheska sniffled, smiling. “You can really nail his voice, ma’am.”

“Thank you. Took years of practice.”

“And about the library—”

Riza turned to face her. Her eyes were hard again, but she didn’t seem angry—just tired. _I had just returned from Ishval, and I had just turned twenty-one._ The year Sheska turned twenty-one, she was languishing on unemployment checks, her mother’s diagnosis gave her three more years, and Brigadier General Hughes was buried before summer’s end. She knew what it was like to only pay attention to someone else’s schedule. Maybe they were more alike than different, in that small way.

“The library is private because no other part of our lives is private, Sheska,” she said. “We are protective of that.” She laid her hand over the papers on Sheska’s lap. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t trust you.”

Lightning hopped onto the bench and laid his head on Sheska’s leg. The sun glimmered in the ripples of the pond as the other dogs bounded through the weeds, spraying a group of giggling children when they shook the water from their fur.

“Then, ma’am,” Sheska took her resignation letter and folded it in half, slipping the newspaper clipping inside, “what we should do next?”

“What I should have done the very moment my husband was sworn in.” Riza stood and dusted off her skirt. “Ask for help.”

 

* * *

 

Mama Crista’s Ristorante wasn’t open for lunch, but the moment one of the waiters saw Riza standing outside the front door, the maitre d' came running to unlock it.

“I’ll have the usual,” she said, and before Sheska could blink they were ushered to a table, the cleaning crew dispersed. Lou and Sam walked back to stand guard at the door while Sheska took in the lush interior: crystal chandeliers overhead, candelabras and flowers on every table, Aerugan columns lining the walls papered with gilded damask.

“Riza! What has my boy gotten into this time?”

A large woman draped in a black silk frock and smoky pearls, gray roots showing at the crown of her dark hair, took a seat at the table. She struck Sheska as familiar, though she was sure they had never met. Riza, oddly, seemed to grow shyer in her presence.

“This one is mostly on me, I’m afraid,” she said, and passed the woman the article from _Capital Chatter._

“Sons a’bitches,” the woman grunted, prodding it sharply with one beringed finger after reading. “It’s always the wife’s fault, isn’t it? The old ‘ball-and-chain’ bullshit. I don’t care what Vivian says, I should’ve had the entire staff of the _Central Bullhorn_ run out of town when they ran that garbage ‘investigation’ into your time with Bradley.”

“I don’t need anyone run out of town, Mrs. Mustang. Just advice.”

“Please, Riza, for god’s sake.” Mrs. Mustang rolled her eyes, and suddenly the tough woman from the Prime Minister’s old photograph appeared in Sheska’s mind. “It’s been two years. Every time you call me that I age ten.”

Riza looked down, sheepish. “Sorry. Chris.”

“Advice, then, huh?” Mrs. Mustang rubbed at her chin, looking over the article again. “I might have to call in some of the girls. Yilin’s in town, you know. You free this afternoon?”

Riza nodded at Sheska. “My schedule is wide open.”

“Perfect.” Mrs. Mustang leaned over the back of her chair and hollered in the direction of the kitchen, “Grigory! Get one of the cooks to start working on a lunch spread! I’m expecting a lot of company!”

 

* * *

 

Over the next hour, the maitre d' dashed between the door and their table, each time arriving with another new, more beautiful, more well-dressed woman. All of them greeted Riza with hugs and smiles and shook Sheska’s hand with warmth. Mrs. Mustang introduced them casually, but Sheska was having a hard time keeping calm as the names and faces grew more familiar. There was Hetty Schiller, whose neck graced every ad for Thorpe Diamonds; Marguerite Chase, the voice of Sergeant Bernice Wolf on _All the Fuhrer’s Men;_ Grace deWitt, the ballerina; Jana Petrova, the model; Noelle Fairmont, the painter. Lucy Harris sailed through the door in a chartreuse blouse and kissed Sheska on both cheeks again.

But she couldn’t stop her jaw from dropping when Elaine Zhao arrived.

“Yilin, you’re just in time,” Mrs. Mustang said. “Martini?”

“Thanks, Mum, but I’ve got a matinée tomorrow morning.” The actress turned to Riza, putting her hands on her hips. “I hear my favorite sister’s got press troubles again?”

“Hey, Yilin, I thought I was your favorite!”

“”You never return my calls, Jaz, so Riza replaced you.” Sheska felt as if she were in a weird dream, watching Elaine Zhao stick out her tongue at violin virtuoso Jasmine Fioretti.

“Could you read them the article, Sheska?” Riza asked, but then Marguerite Chase took the clipping from Sheska’s hand and insisted she could do it, and suddenly Sheska found herself sitting between twin jazz singers Laura and Lizzy Germaine, accepting a martini and appetizers from elusive mistress Vanessa Novak, and listening to one of her favorite radio stars read a tabloid while perched on the arm of the First Lady’s chair.

“What a crock of shit! Oh, thanks, Mum,” Noelle Fairmont said when Marguerite finished, taking the cigarette Mrs. Mustang offered her. “As if Roy hasn’t been moping for months about going to Creta without you!”

“He’s been _such_ a baby,” Hetty Schiller agreed. “It’s your fault, Vanessa; you spoiled him too much over the years.”

Vanessa Novak pouted, pulling at her dangling crystal earrings. “My fault?! It’s Annie’s fault! She’s the eldest! She always gave him whatever he wanted if he so much as batted his eyelashes!”

“Girls,” Mrs. Mustang barked, and the arguments ceased. “We need a plan. The First Term Gala is on Saturday night, so we’ve got four and a half more days to clean this up. Riza isn’t going into that snake’s nest with _this—”_ she waved the newsprint in the air, “—pinned to her back. Especially since Roy’s already got that Cretan ambassador crap pinned to his.”

Ideas were batted around the table on how to push _DIPLOMACY OR DIVORCE?_ off the front page. Riza could make a large donation to an obscure charity. Riza could be beset with a sudden illness and have a harrowing yet timely recovery. Riza could make a surprise visit to a public school. Riza could call up the Emperor of Xing and have her own trip while the Prime Minister was away.

“I’ve got one,” Elaine Zhao said. “But I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

Riza fidgeted in her chair. “Go ahead.”

“You’ve never done any interviews, have you?”

“Yilin,” Lucy Harris said in a warning tone, “she can’t.”

“She could,” Elaine insisted. “Look, we took care of the records, but we did too good of a job. The public likes to have some backstory to chew on! They eat up everything about Jaz busking in train stations, and Lizzy and Laura singing in the old bar, and how my first performance was tricking Border Patrol into thinking I had a passport. They’ve got nothing on Riza. She only has to do one tell-all to get them buzzing for weeks!”

“But any paper would want to keep digging,” Jana Petrova argued. “That article in the _Times_ last year nearly ruined Roy’s polls in the South. What journalist could be trusted not to ruin them again?”

Sheska piped up, “Sabine Stallion writes a column for _The Lady’s Home Companion.”_

Every perfectly-coiffed head turned to her. Sheska gripped the stem of her martini glass and tried not to blush.

“Her column is on women and the state of modern romance,” she explained, “but she’s also done some novels—”

“Oh, we’ve _all_ read some Sabine Stallion novels,” Hetty said, and the Germaine sisters giggled. “You a fan of _Three Equations for Love,_ Sheska?”

Alas, the blush won. “I haven’t read that one yet. Only the—” she had to swallow and convince herself to say it aloud, “— _Seducing the Sage_ trilogy.”

“You should.” Marguerite fanned herself with her hand. “That wedding scene made alchemy sound like something worth studying.” The sisters giggled harder.

“I could do it.” The giggles stopped when Riza spoke. “Yilin’s right. Keeping quiet hasn’t worked in my favor, in the long run. And _The Lady’s Home Companion_ has always been far kinder to me than the _Bullhorn_ or _Chatter.”_ She squared her shoulders, the soldier’s posture returning. “At this point, what do I have to lose?”

The table fell quiet as everyone thought it over.

“Well, Riza,” Mrs. Mustang took the cigarettes back from Noelle and lit her own, “I’ll get in touch with the _Home Companion_ , if that’s what you want. But be careful, and remember this…” Smoke billowed from her nostrils the same color as her pearls. “They’re always going to judge you harder than my boy.”

Riza’s smile was as thin and sharp as a knife. “Believe me, Chris, I know.”

 

* * *

 

Sheska went to the court-martial office on her lunch break on Tuesday.

“Hi, Alice,” she said as she came to the front desk and held out a paper bag. “Split a sandwich with me?”

They sat on the wall of a little courtyard near the west gate to eat. It was exactly as awkward as she expected.

“Gwendolyn told you,” Alice said quietly, picking at her crust. Sheska nodded.

“I’m sorry I didn’t notice your phone number. Or the coffees.”

“No, I’m sorry I didn’t ask you outright,” Alice sighed. “It’s just—I was scared, you know? Even though I was pretty confident you were—well, that you wouldn’t be too shocked if I—” She shook her head, her short hair falling over her ears. “I wanted to be sure, I guess. Really sure. So it wouldn’t hurt too badly if you said no.”

“I understand,” Sheska said, and she did. “I’ve done that too.”

“Are you seeing someone, then?” Alice tried on a smile, but it was Sheska’s turn to shake her head.

“I…want to be. But I haven’t done anything about it. I might never do anything about it. I think my last girlfriend messed me up too badly.”

“Why? What happened?”

Sheska studied the edge of her sandwich intently, lost in the half-moon craters left by her teeth. “We had only been dating for a few months, but we moved in together just before my mother died. I never told my mother about her, and I didn’t tell Maisie how sick my mother was until it was too late. She helped me get through the funeral anyway. After that I was…I was dependent on her. For a lot.” She forced herself to swallow. “When the court-martial office let me go, Maisie told me I didn’t have to worry about a thing; she’d work double shifts, get a second job until I was back on my feet.

“But I couldn’t find a job. I must’ve sent, oh, hundreds of resumés, but only had a handful of interviews, and they never went well. Maisie lost her patience quickly. She would tell me I was being lazy, that I wasn’t working hard enough. I believed her; she’d done so much for me, and here I couldn’t do anything to pay her back. When she yelled at me I thought I deserved it. When she threatened to leave I begged her to stay.

“It went on like that for a few years. It might have gone on even longer, but last spring my aunt twisted her ankle and wrote to ask if I could stay at my uncle’s farm to help out until she recovered. They offered to pay me wages. I was so thrilled—finally I could show Maisie I wasn’t worthless.” She kicked her heels against the courtyard wall. “When I got back to Central, she’d taken her things and gone.”

“Oh, Sheska…” Alice said softly.

“I still think about her.” Sheska tore up the last few bits of her bread and squished them flat between her fingers. “I still wonder what it was that finally made her go. If she realized, in the end, what she was doing to me, or if she just left because I’d never be what she wanted.”

A breeze caressed the flags flying over the West Gate and ruffled their hair. The leaves of the birch trees lining the avenues that fanned out from the hill of Central Command had just begun to tint slightly gold.

“But aside from Maisie, I kind of messed things up for myself, too,” Sheska said, laughing weakly. “Mar—my friend saw me at work on Friday with Gwendolyn’s lipstick all over my mouth.”

“No…” Sheska nodded. Alice’s eyes grew wide. “No! Oh no, Sheska, nooo!” Her mouth fell open in horror, and Sheska soon found that she was laughing not in pain, but because Alice’s face, and the memory, and the situation were just too funny.

“It was horrible!” she wheezed. “Someone tried to tell me, but I just bulldozed upstairs! And it’s so unfair, because I didn’t even get a real kiss out of it!” Alice started laughing too, covering her face with her hands and groaning louder. They laughed until Sheska was hiccupping as she tossed the rest of her sandwich to the pigeons waiting at their feet.

“Well, to hell with her then,” Alice declared. “If she can’t see past a little messy lipstick, she’ll miss out on half the decent women in this city.”

It didn’t make Sheska’s chest hurt any less, but she smiled at Alice anyway. As the bells of Central City tolled the hour, they climbed down from the wall and strolled through the courtyard back to the court-martial office, parting at the door as friends.

 

* * *

 

It was unclear which woman in the office was the most nervous about meeting Sabine Stallion; even the third-floor typists had taken their lunch break early, hoping to catch a glimpse when she arrived.

“My copy of _An Aerugan Affair_ is falling apart, and I’ve caught my husband reading _Flirting with the Fuhrer_ while the twins were napping—more than once.” Dana’s red nails drummed nervously on the back of her clipboard as they waited on the first floor for the magazine entourage to arrive. “Oh, I hope she’s not stuck-up! They always say you should never meet your heroes!”

 _“The Lady’s Home Companion_ is going to rush their whole issue just for this exclusive, so she can’t be _too_ stuck-up,” Sheska reassured her.

“She can be as stuck-up as she likes, so as long as this article makes my client look good.” Mrs. Oglinski’s hard exterior had cracked just enough that anxiety was peaking through. “Ugh, I’m desperate for a smoke. This is the only house in Central that has rules like ‘no cigarettes around the dogs.’”

“Have one later,” Dana hissed, “their car is here! I can see the photographer’s camera stand in the back!”

The three of them rushed forward to assist the _Home Companion_ group, but when Sabine Stallion stepped out of the car, it was impossible not to stop and stare. Even Mrs. Oglinski’s gruffness was shocked away; she led their guest of honor to the lift with an almost deferential stoop. The jaws of the third-floor typists all dropped as they passed.

Yet out of everyone, Riza was the least surprised to meet the one, the only…

“Mrs. Baines!” she exclaimed when she saw the old woman, and then laughed merrily. “I should have guessed! You always struck me as a rebel type. But shall I call you Katherine today, or ‘Sabine?’”

“It takes a rebel to spot a rebel, Riza Mustang!” Mrs. Baines chuckled as she scratched Thunder under the chin. “And I’ve told you a thousand times to call me Kitty!”

After a brief tour of the fifth floor, the photographer decreed the Green Room was the one with the best light. She set up the camera stand and directed Riza to sit in her usual chair, explaining, “We want everything to look natural; the readers can see you having tea in your home just as they would in theirs.”

“Oh dear,” Riza said, looking at the camera as if it were an animal she didn’t want to get too close to. “If you want natural, someone will have to distract me. Every time I have to be photographed I fear that I’ll blink and waste film. Then I try not to, and the—” Mrs. Oglinski coughed loudly. “—Roy says I stare like an owl."

“Why doesn’t Sheila stand near it, then, and you can just look at her?”

“Sheska,” Riza corrected, before Sheska could stop her. Mrs. Baines blinked.

“Goodness, have I gotten it wrong this whole time?” She uncapped her pen and sighed. “They really need to make some automail contraption for old women’s ears. Look at _Sheska,_ please, and speak up.”

And with that, the interview began.

 

* * *

 

Riza wasn’t perfect. She answered questions slowly at first and in very few words; often Mrs. Baines had to prompt her to elaborate. Sheska thought at one point that Mrs. Oglinski would have a heart attack when Riza slipped and referred to her husband by his title—which Mrs. Baines seized upon.

“You’re very formal with your husband, for a newlywed couple. Has it been hard to adjust to such a significant change in your relationship?”

“Well…yes,” Riza answered, then quickly added, “and no. Of course, it would be hard for any couple to be thrust into the spotlight as we were. But I didn’t have as much trouble adjusting to being married as I did to Roy going to work without me. I held the same position on his staff for fifteen years. Honestly, I didn’t think that leaving would affect me as much as it did. On the campaign trail, I felt like I was wasting so much time, having nothing ‘real’ to do. It drove me stir-crazy. Seeing me that way made Roy feel guilty, and knowing he felt guilty made _me_ feel guilty, and on and on…”

She glanced fearfully at the camera stand when the photographer adjusted some knob. Sheska quickly scooped up Thunder and waved her paw, and Riza’s shoulders relaxed as she looked away.

“That cycle wasn’t new either; Roy is far too empathetic. Always has been. It’s hard to break our old habits because he hates to make me uncomfortable, even to the point of ridiculousness.” She folded her hands in her lap, twisting her wedding band as she did. “While we were engaged, he wouldn’t call me anything but ‘Miss Hawkeye.’ ’Miss H.’ was about as informal as it got. I had to insist that it was no longer accurate after the wedding.”

“And _I_ had to insist again on top of that,” Mrs. Oglinski muttered, and Sheska was grateful anew that Mrs. Baines was hard of hearing.

In spite of her age, though, Mrs. Baines didn’t hold back. “Sabine Stallion” asked questions that—while worded delicately—made Sheska herself feel exposed. Was it difficult being a woman in the military and then out of it? How was she received by the other wives in her position, by the women with Parliament seats of their own? What did she think of her husband’s policies? What would she change if their positions were reversed? What did she think of Olivier Armstrong—“Specifically…?” “In general.” “You’ll have to be specific, Katherine, otherwise both she and my husband will take anything I say to mean that I’ve betrayed one to side with the other.”—specifically her significance as the only woman at the highest levels of the brass? What future did she see for women in Amestris, in the home, in the military, in Parliament, married, unmarried, with careers, with children, what part did the spouse of the Prime Minister play in it all?

“I hear you aren’t fond of being called ‘First Lady.’”

“That’s correct.”

“Could you explain why?”

“Because ‘First Lady’ is the title of a Fuhrer’s wife, who is tied to the military. I am no longer in the military.”

“True,” Mrs. Baines laughed. "I’m sure you are aware, then, of the rumors surrounding your resignation. As you’ve said yourself, you kept your commission for many years and could have kept it regardless of Mr. Mustang’s choice to resign and run for office. So, Riza…would you like to put the biggest question to rest, once and for all?”

Riza twisted her ring again, but this time it was a deliberate gesture, slow and controlled. Sheska wished, suddenly, that Maria could be there to watch. She must have seen Riza do something like this before, must have seen her wear this same cool, calculating expression, for the code name made sense now. Sheska could hear the verse in Maria’s voice, recited dramatically over the din at Shang’s:

 _At the gates of Ushurr stood the Sphinx, lion-woman, deliverer, devourer_  
_At the gates of Ushurr stood the Sphinx, whose claws spared none_  
_At the gates of Ushurr knelt Mithradatha, and the Sphinx’s gaze, eagle-eyed, pierced his soul_  
_At the gates of Ushurr spake the Sphinx, “Consider my riddle, and consider it well.  
_ _Deliver unto me the answer, or find it betwixt my teeth.”_

“I would,” Riza agreed.

Sheska imagined the _clang_ of the gates of the underworld as the equally mythic Sabine Stallion asked, “Was your marriage an arrangement between yourself and Mr. Mustang, to benefit his political career?”

The only sounds in the room were the soft snoring of Black Hayate, curled up on his favorite basket, and the offbeat ticking of the broken mantle clock. Mrs. Oglinski’s face was ashen. Dana gripped her clipboard, knuckles white. Sheska caught her own reflection in the silver shell capping the flashbulb on the photographer’s camera, and found herself gnawing her bottom lip hard enough to make it red.

“‘Arranged’ is an interesting word; I don’t know if it applies to us in the way that everyone uses it. Our marriage did benefit Roy’s career, but it wasn’t something we had ever had discussed before, nor had any sort of plan for. To put it simply: we left the military, but did not want to part from one another.

“I don’t think many people would find this kind of proposal romantic, but it was no cut-and-dry contract either. It was decided within two days. Roy resigned his commission and told me of his intention to run for the premier office. The following morning I resigned too. Somehow, this caught him by surprise. He told me I should’ve waited longer to make my decision, that I might want more time to consider my future.

“I told him I had no future in the military whatsoever if it wasn’t by his side. So I gave him two options: either he could hire me for a position on his campaign staff, or he could marry me.”

The Sphinx looked down and smiled fondly as Cyclone yawned and curled into a fluffy knot at her feet.

“He chose the second without hesitation. So I think I arranged it quite well.”

 

* * *

 

When the knock came at the Green Room door, the photographer was still trying to get Riza to pose for one final straightforward shot. Though Mrs. Baines had faith in Sheska’s ability to distract her, Sheska was quickly losing that faith in herself. While she succeeded at getting Riza to drop her wide-eyed stare, they’d quickly discovered that to do so, Riza had to channel her fear of the camera somewhere else.

“Relax your jaw, ma’am,” the photographer coaxed. “Now the hands. Elbows. Shoulders. Back. Jaw again. Ma’am, if you could just tilt your—no, the jaw again—”

 _“Excuse me! Open up!”_ a high, nasally voice barked through the door. _“This is the emergency dog-catcher, summoned here on an urgent call!”_

“Dana,” Riza sighed, jaw still clenched, “let my husband in.”

The Prime Minister was introduced to the _Home Companion_ team. Upon the reveal of her pen-name, he bowed grandiosely before Mrs. Baines.

“My mother adores your books, Ms. Stallion,” he gushed, kissing the back of her hand. “Tell me, is there any room left in your circle of devotees? I imagine your house is already full of stunning men at your beck and call, but if you ever needed inspiration for a new work, I would be happy to—”

“You are a _rake,_ sir,” Mrs. Baines giggled, her wrinkled cheeks flushed crimson. “Mr. Baines is quite enough for me! Stay within your own party lines, at least!”

After making small talk and leashing the dogs, the Prime Minister made to leave the room, but stopped when he spotted the camera stand.

“Oh no,” he said, peering through the lens. “You aren’t trying to take her picture, are you? That’s a lost cause. My wife is physically incapable of sitting for a portrait unless she impersonates a barn owl.”

“Don’t start,” Riza grunted, but it was too late.

“Go on, I want to see it again!” He ushered the photographer back in place and moved to the side. “I’ve never seen anyone make their eyes as wide as she can, it’s practically inhuman! Come on, Riza, demonstrate for us!”

“I will not, and if all you came to do is mock—”

“Fine, here, I’ll give it my best.” He shook his head like an actor preparing to go onstage. “Here’s what your magazine cover will look like. Prepare yourselves.”

Concentrating, the Prime Minister squeezed his eyes shut and wrinkled his nose. Then, as if putting on a mask, he clenched his jaw and gaped, eyebrows shooting up. He looked a little like an owl, but far more like a bug-eyed goldfish.

The magazine group were the first to laugh. Mrs. Baines was bent double, clutching her cane for support. Then Sheska lost it. Then Dana sputtered into her hands. Then Mrs. Oglinski snorted once, twice, three times and she was gone.

Riza sat still, glaring. And glaring. And glaring.

And then, like a fine splinter edging across the surface of a frozen pond, she began to crack.

 _“Roy,”_ she growled, biting her lip, still fighting, but the Prime Minister crossed his eyes at her, and that was it. She laughed.

Not the light, little laughs Sheska was used to, the way she laughed at the dogs or at Harry’s bad jokes. Not the short, low chuckle that escaped when she was quietly amused at something in the paper or talking with civilians during official appearances. Riza laughed so loud that the dogs began barking. Riza laughed so loud that Lou, living statue, jumped. Riza laughed and laughed and in the middle tried to say, _“You’re an ass, Roy Mustang,”_ but it came out so broken that Sheska only heard, _“Your a-ass-ss, Roy Mustang,”_ and that made Sheska laugh harder too. The whole room was in stitches. Black Hayate, awoken from his nap, whined at all of them, betrayed.

The flashbulb flared and the shutter clicked, but Riza retained eye contact with her husband, who stood smugly at the photographer’s side, and her eyes weren’t owlish, and her jaw wasn’t tight. “An absolute ass,” she said again—Mrs. Oglinski hurriedly turned to Mrs. Baines and added this was off-the-record—but the Prime Minister only winked in reply.

“Beautiful,” he declared, clapping the photographer on the shoulder, even though no one could see the film yet, let alone the print. “It’ll fly off the stands! Now if you’ll excuse me, ladies, I’m taking these hairballs to the pound—whoops, I mean _park.”_ With four leashes in his hands and four guards trailing behind, he strolled to the lift, whistling all the way.

 

* * *

 

Sheska awoke the morning of the First Term Gala surprised that she had slept at all. She tripled-checked to make sure she’d remembered to pack her heels and best frock in a spare bag before she left her flat, and looked into every reflective surface she passed to make sure her hair hadn’t escaped from her mother’s fine ivory combs yet.

“Big day today, Sheska!” Stan greeted her at the front door.

“Just pray I don’t trip, Stan,” she replied, waving her heels with one hand.

The office was completely empty; the regular staff had weekends off, but if the Mustangs had events on Saturdays, so did their personal assistants. Dana was applying rouge at her desk using the back of a spoon for a mirror, while Harry was piling what looked like the entire contents of his desk into a suitcase.

“Do you think they’ve got paperclips in Creta?” he asked, holding three boxes and looking stricken.

“It’s not the other side of the moon, Harry,” Dana mumbled around a tube of lipstick.

“But they made this treaty because they need our steel, so what if there’s a shortage?” He waffled for a moment, then packed two of the three. “I guess I can pick up more at our West City stop tomorrow, so I have enough before we cross the border. Nicholas always has spares, too.” He scratched his head roughly, making his hair stand up even higher than usual. “Sometimes I wish Nicholas was _my_ assistant.”

Sheska agreed with a laugh as she walked to her desk, but stopped short. There was a long, thin package on top of it, tied with a ribbon of Lucy Harris’ signature teal silk.

“Who left this?” she asked.

“It was already there when I got in this morning,” Harry shrugged.

They craned their heads over her shoulders as she untied the ribbon and carefully prised off the lid. Inside, nestled in tissue paper, was an evening gown. The silk was deep gold at the neckline, but bled into shades of orange and red at the hem, like a sunset. The beadwork shimmered as she lifted it out, catching the light at every angle.

It was the most beautiful thing Sheska had ever seen.

Dana fingered the hem, muttering, _“Holy shit,"_ but Harry dived for the box, fishing an envelope out of the packaging.

“There’s a card!” Sheska had to stop herself from tearing it open with her teeth.

 

_Miss Janovich,_

_We wanted to give you a token of our appreciation for all your help_ , _but Riza said you’re too polite to accept gifts—if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black! So if you won’t take this as a gift, consider it a loan. After the gala, feel free to return it at your leisure to:_

 _Ms. Elaine Zhao_  
_c/o The National Theatre_  
_14 Second Avenue  
_ _Central City, CD012_

_Enjoy the night, and stop by for lunch any time!_

 

Dana stared at the numerous signatures crowding the bottom of the card.

“Sheska,” she said slowly, “are you sure you want to work for the First Lady forever? Because if you ever want to switch bosses, I’d be happy to.”

“Same,” Harry gasped, “I’ll switch anytime! Oh my god, _Elaine Zhao,_ and she _signed it…”_

Sheska ran her hands over the gown gently, tracing the beads. It was something a woman who attended Parliamentary galas would wear. It was something a woman who wanted to be noticed would wear. It was something her mother would’ve adored.

“No dice, you two,” she said. “If you wanted my job, you should’ve applied for it.” She snatched the card out of Harry’s hands, grinning. “But if you want to go to the First Lady’s charity luncheons in my place, by all means! I’d love to see someone else try to deal with Mrs. MacGruer.”

 

* * *

 

Sheska had gone ahead to the banquet hall to make sure everything was proceeding on schedule, but that didn’t stop Riza from stopping by four hours earlier than she needed to.

“I just want to make sure this goes well,” she said, before ordering a waiter to readjust the positions of the table napkins.

“It will, ma’am,” Sheska assured her. Riza did not seem at all convinced.

After a lengthy inspection of the premises, they returned to #5 late in the afternoon to change into their evening clothes. Sheska had no doubt that Lucy Harris’ sales would soon be booming; the ivory gown made Riza look like she’d stepped out of a painting, the light catching in every miniscule fold of the silk. The Prime Minister watched her walk down the front steps to their car and was, for a long moment, uncharacteristically speechless.

“I’m very sorry, miss, but I seem to have the wrong house,” he finally said. “They said some old, retired alchemist lived here, not a pretty girl.”

“Charming,” Riza drawled, adjusting one of her jade earrings, “for a twelve-year-old.” Yet when she slipped into the car after him, Sheska could’ve sworn her cheeks were pink.

It was hard for Sheska to keep from fidgeting on the ride over, especially since she was next to Nicholas, whose shirt collar was so starched and high she wondered how he could breathe, let alone sit still. She smoothed her hands up and down her knees, hoping that wearing Elaine Zhao’s dress would give her Elaine Zhao’s charisma. When the car stopped, she scurried out the moment the driver relayed their arrival over the radio, clipboard tucked under her arm. If she were fast enough, maybe she could comb the ballroom one last time to assuage Riza’s inevitable fears that something wasn’t ready.

She rounded the corner and collided with Maria Ross.

“Uh—” Sheska began, but couldn’t think of how to finish. Maria was wearing a tuxedo, her dark hair slicked back. Sheska could see the slight bulge on her left side where her firearm was hidden. The wire of a radio earpiece was tangled around her neck. Sheska’s heart leapt into her throat. “Hi,” she finally got out.

Maria hurriedly stifled her surprise, glancing down at their shoes, then cautiously let her gaze drift back up to some spot over Sheska’s shoulder. “Hey.” She nodded once. “You look nice.”

“Thanks.” Sheska swallowed. “You do too.”

They stood there for a moment, and Sheska thought, desperately, of what on earth she could say next—if anything could be said next. Maria must have felt the same, for she finally let herself meet Sheska’s eyes as she opened her mouth and—

 _“Shepherd, this is Orchard, requesting status on expected deliveries, over.”_ Radio static crackled from Maria’s back pocket.

“Duty calls,” she said, looking away again. “Have a good night, Sheska.”

“Thanks, and—hey, look, I want to—”

She still didn’t know what words should follow, as Maria turned and left the way she came.

“Sheska?” Riza called from further down the hall. “I think we should do one final check, just to make sure everything’s in place.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Sheska closed her eyes and tried to shove her heart back where it belonged. “I’ll be right there.”

 

* * *

 

It took seven months, countless hours, and a budget Sheska still cringed to enter into the adding machine, but they did it: the First Term Gala began as a wild success.

The Members of Parliament and their guests were received by Riza and the Prime Minister and seated without incident. The hors d’oeuvres were complimented and no one had taken too much advantage of the champagne yet. The waitstaff was experienced. The banquet hall was glimmering. The orchestra arrived on time and was warming up for the dances in a spare room. After confirming with the chef that dinner was ready to be served as soon as the speeches were finished, Sheska was starting to think that by the end of the night, she may even be able to enjoy herself.

That idea dissolved when Dana burst through the kitchen doors, looking terrified.

“We can’t find the First Lady!” she hissed in Sheska’s ear.

Harry and Nicholas were waiting for them in the hall, both looking grim.

“She’s supposed to give the welcoming speech, but she was supposed to start ten minutes ago, and she’s just…gone!” Harry flapped his arms as if the First Lady was a bird who’d flown out of his hands.

“Maybe she went outside for air? There’s over three hundred people in here, and it is warm—”

“I asked Miss Ross from Security,” Nicholas said, shaking his head, “and she confirmed that none of the guards have seen anyone come in or go out.”

Sheska felt relieved that she didn’t have to suggest doing exactly that, and then felt horrible for being relieved. _Okay, focus,_ she thought, clutching her clipboard to her chest. _Who knows Riza best?_ “Has anyone asked the PM?”

“We can’t.” Dana gestured despondently in the direction of the ballroom. “He’s trapped: he’s being grilled on Cretan economics right now by Tillman, Ubec, and the Fuhrer.”

“They’re not likely to let him loose until the speech starts, and the speech can’t start because there’s no speaker,” Nicholas explained.

“Where the hell could she be?” Harry tugged at his hair. “What the hell do we do?”

They all looked, stricken, at Sheska.

“I…” _Focus, focus, focus. What do you know about Riza? What do you remember?_ She closed her eyes and summoned it all. Seven months of blue agendas, seven months of reading the day’s events in the Dining Room at oh-six-thirty, of walking Riza’s dogs, sorting Riza’s mail, taking Riza’s calls, attending Riza’s lunches and teas and parties and press events—

“I’m going to the lavatory.” Sheska ignored Harry’s questions as she sped away. “Don’t worry, we’ll be right out.”

Unlike the Children’s Hospital, the ladies’ room was full here. She nodded politely to the sparkling women touching up their lipstick in the mirrors, trying not to bounce in place as she waited for them all to trickle out. She was close to screaming at MP Yule, who washed her hands at an infuriatingly glacial pace. But slowly, achingly slowly, the lavatory emptied until Sheska was the only one left, facing one closed stall.

“It’s okay, ma’am,” she said, knocking softly. “I locked the outer door.”

Silence.

“Is it the stage, ma’am? Is the podium too close? Because I can have them push it further back, to give you some distance.”

Silence.

Then, “No. That wouldn’t do anything. It’s the…all the…” A shuddering inhale. “The space. Between me and a crowd. Everyone looking up. It’s too exposed.”

“Okay. We can change that,” Sheska vowed. “What if…what if you were closer, then? You don’t need to stand at the podium. We can bring the microphone to Table 1, and you can give your introduction from there.”

Another inhale, then a softer exhale. “Wouldn’t it look strange to other people? To give a speech from the ballroom floor?”

“Well, ma’am, it’s the first First Term Gala in thirty years.” Sheska smiled. “There’s no MP alive who could compare this one to the last. Everything about it may as well be strange.”

A shaky laugh. “You’re right. Imagine, my being saved by the Bradley regime.”

Silence. Then, the click of the stall lock, and Riza stepped out. She didn’t look at all confident, but Sheska knew better than to think that meant she’d back down.

“Alright,” she said. “No podium.”

They met the other assistants back in the hall where Sheska had left them. Nicholas and Harry hurried away at once to rewire the microphone while Dana ordered Riza’s speech cards, assuring her that none of the guests had noticed that they were running behind schedule. Everything was taken care of, but Sheska stuck by Riza’s side anyway, walking her all the way back to her seat. The Prime Minister was still held hostage by his Blue Party opponents several tables away.

“Pretend you’re Clarisse Knight, ma’am,” Sheska whispered before she left, passing Riza the microphone stand from Harry. “You just have to act.”

Riza didn’t say anything. But she stood up as straight as she could—the straightest, maybe, that any human being could stand—and tapped a spoon against her champagne glass so that the microphone amplified the chime.

Sheska wove through the throng of guests returning to their seats to join Harry, Dana, and Nicholas in the far corner, swiping a tray of champagne glasses from a passing waiter as she did. The three of them accepted them gratefully; Harry gulped down half of his before Riza even began.

“Good evening, everyone. The Prime Minister and I would like to welcome you tonight, at the First Term Gala of 1925.” Riza didn’t smile as the room applauded, but she had schooled her face enough to look at least calm. “Last year, the nation of Amestris held the first national election for the premier office in nearly three decades. It is thanks to Fuhrer Grumman’s Parliamentary reforms that we are able to gather here tonight—” the Fuhrer inclined his head in acknowledgment of the second round of applause, “—to celebrate not only a new prime minister, but an entirely new era in our government.

“The last year has been the start of a new era for me as well. As I’m sure many of you know, I am far from an experienced hostess.” At Table 6, Mrs. MacGruer whispered something into Mrs. Gerrig’s ear, who put no effort into hiding her smirk. “But I’ve learned that planning a gala is a lot like running a government. You spend months toiling over the details, checking and double-checking to make sure everything is where it should be, that all the right people will be taken care of, and that the whole thing won’t bankrupt you. Then when you finally present the fruits of your labor to the public, the only thing people remark on is what you’re wearing.”

Laughter traveled through the ballroom. The knot in Sheska’s stomach unwound as Mrs. Gerrig’s smirk dropped.

“That being said, neither governments nor galas are held together by one person alone. They rely on the efforts of many people doing many jobs—most of them unglamorous and underappreciated. But if you removed any of these pieces, the machine would collapse on itself. Even the smallest cog keeps the wheels turning.”

There was a pause. Maybe Riza stopped to swallow, or catch her breath, or maybe she was still nervous to have so many eyes on her at once. Holding her speech cards in her right hand, her left hand was clenched in a tight fist at her side, as if she were preparing to throw a punch if provoked.

The Prime Minister shifted in his chair. If she’d blinked, Sheska would’ve missed his hand brush once against the back of his wife’s.

Riza’s fingers uncurled. She continued.

“So rather than bore you all with a list of what Parliament has accomplished in the first year of my husband’s term, I would like to thank the people who turn the wheels for us. Our interns. Our secretaries. Our phone operators. Our janitors, caterers, and servers. Our security teams and drivers. Our pages, clerks, accountants, and consultants. Anyone who ever refilled a coffee pot without asking, whether it was in the House, Command, or my own kitchen.”

As the ballroom laughed again, Riza looked up and over to the corner where Sheska, Dana, Harry, and Nicholas stood.

“And my personal thanks,” she said, “to four very important people who keep my husband and I sane.

“Let us toast, then.” Riza raised her glass and met the eyes of the waitstaff gathered by the door, the bodyguards at the windows, and the four assistants. She looked at Sheska and smiled, genuinely. “To a good first year. To a better first term. To the Parliament of Amestris, and everyone—truly everyone—behind it!”

Sheska raised her champagne glass and joined the chorus cheering, “ _Here, here!”_ After taking a sip, she set it down so she could take off her glasses, as tears were budding rapidly and blurring her vision. She wasn’t alone; Harry sniffled loudly as he clinked his glass against hers, and Dana changed hands to wipe hurriedly at her eyes.

“In all my years…” The three of them turned. Nicholas was looking past them, his glass still held low. He cleared his throat, but his face was red around the cheeks and nose. Was he—was Nicholas _emotional?_ He coughed again and finished, “In all my years at Command, at all the banquets, balls, parties, galas, and god-knows-what else, I never heard Bradley give a speech like that.”

“Here, here,” Sheska said, and in the spur of the moment she flung out her arms and hugged him.

Nicholas stiffened. Then carefully hugged her back.

Over the curve of his bony shoulder, she could see Riza nod to her tablemates, accepting their compliments. The Prime Minister was beaming. He sprang up to push in Riza’s chair for her as she sat down, a gesture Gwendolyn complained her beau never did for her. When he took his seat he rested his hand palm-up on the table, and without looking down, Riza laced their fingers together loosely, easily, as if it was something that came naturally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sheska's borrowed dress is based on [this absolute stunner circa 1922.](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/e2/ca/3d/e2ca3d276c0ec3e496843373d90715af.jpg)
> 
> ETA: And Maria's look was based on [this photo I refound in my piles o' links](https://66.media.tumblr.com/9251ff55744cc19750a52c4dc54efa17/tumblr_meqyvgL6LL1r495bko3_1280.jpg) kjdfgh
> 
> If you noticed that the chapter count increased by 1, you are very observant! Stay tuned for the epilogue :)


	5. Specs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I received FOUR BEAUTIFUL FANARTS from squidmango but am linking them in this chapter instead of where they first appear, because the last one on the page DOES contain a spoiler for the end!! So [open in a new tab and then feast your eyes](https://squidmangoes.tumblr.com/post/179605651053/uhhhhh-i-ended-up-making-a-bunch-of-gratuitous) when you've finished reading ;)

The newsstand next to Sheska’s tram stop insisted they had no copies of the latest issue of _The Lady’s Home Companion._

“Sold clean out yesterday,” the man grunted. “There was practically a stampede.”

“Are you sure you don’t have any left? Not even a sample?” Sheska begged. She must have learned something from Lightning, because after a moment of twitching under her pleading eyes, the newsstand owner sighed and went to rifle through his stock.

“They sure make an odd couple,” he remarked as he exchanged Sheska’s cenz for his last, badly-wrinkled _Home Companion_ copy. Riza gazed out from the cover spread with a twinkle in her eye, as if she were sharing an inside joke with you alone. The subtitle over her head crowned her ‘First of Her Kind.’ “Who ever heard of a woman proposing to a man?”

Sheska tucked the magazine under her arm. “I hadn’t, before,” she admitted. “But y’know, sir, I used to work at Central Command back when the Mustangs were stationed here.”

His demeanor altered at once, instantly won over by the promise of gossip. “Really, miss?”

“Really. And from my experience, I can tell you this for certain: if women left every important decision up to the men, we’d never get anything done in this country.”

She tipped her hat to him, smirking, before striding away to catch her tram.

 

* * *

 

Unfortunately, she had to wrinkle the magazine further by shoving it into her briefcase, and her briefcase had to be stuffed under the front seat of one of the Parliament cars. It took practically a caravan to take the Prime Minister, his traveling staff, and all of their luggage to the train station; one entire car was filled with radio equipment alone. At front gate of #5 Cherrywood Street, Harry rose on his toes to kiss his tall, curly-haired girlfriend, while Nicholas bid goodbyes to a horde of tiny nieces and nephews. The Mustangs waited for their car standing an arm’s width apart.

“Dreadful weather.” The Prime Minister had spent the morning thus far quibbling with the staff over how he wanting things packed and complaining about the persistent, sticky fog. “This horrid summer just won’t end.”

“It will be cooler when you return,” Riza said simply, seemingly immune to his dark mood. “Give the seasons a little more time to change.”

Finally, all that was left to pack was the staff. There was a great deal of shuffling and re-shuffling, for every man from Security had broader shoulders than the last. Suitcases were turned on their sides, trunks shoved up and down, and Sheska was plucked from at least two different seats before being planted in the front of the Prime Minister’s car. He and Riza had to share the back with a small cask of mulled wine meant for the Cretan Chancellor.

Sheska wasn’t concerned about the arrangement until the radio crackled with the go-ahead from Security and she realized they had no driver. By the time Maria took her place behind the wheel, it was far too late to switch.

“Orchard, this is Carriage Five. We have Sandstorm, Sphinx, and Specs, we are go. On the move, over.”

_“Copy that, Carriage Five. Over.”_

Sheska couldn’t decide which would be worse: to watch Maria avoid looking at her for the whole trip, or turn her head to the window and have Maria assume she was being ignored. Sheska angled her body to look directly forward out the windshield, but couldn't focus on watching the streets roll past.

A loud rustling noise came from the back seat. Sheska glanced up into the rearview mirror. Behind her, the Prime Minister had plopped his briefcase in his lap and was tearing through it, searching for something, and growing more frustrated the longer he couldn’t find it.

“Before we left, did you see my—”

Riza produced a thick stack of speech cards from her skirt pocket and put them in his hand. “On the dresser.”

“And my—”

She took a pair of reading glasses from her other pocket. “Library desk, left drawer, where you always leave them. I’m getting you a chain.”

The Prime Minister was aghast. “I will not wear a glasses chain.”

“Then you’ll either waste our savings buying new ones every day, or go totally blind.” She fixed the glasses onto his nose. “It could be a good look for you. Scholarly. Like a librarian.”

The Prime Minister glared at her, but with his vision restored his ire returned to the state of his briefcase. “I’ll never get used to how Nicholas orders this. I’ve got no idea where anything is, can’t see any pens, there’s paper clips where there shouldn’t be paper clips, the note pads are always facing the wrong way out…” He fished out a small square of fabric from the depths. “What the hell is this?

“A cleaning cloth, I believe, for the glasses that you refuse to stop losing.” Riza pushed his hands away and took the briefcase from him. With a smooth gesture, she upended the entire thing on top of the cask between them, shaking it for good measure to make sure all the paper clips were out. “Count your speech cards while I fix this.”

The Prime Minister huffed, but obeyed.

Traffic inched forward. Sheska wondered what Maria would think if she asked to turn on the radio, for the tense silence inside the car was practically deafening. Riza was completely absorbed in the task of setting her husband’s briefcase to rights; the sound of her shuffling papers was all that could be heard from the back seat.

“I got a letter from Resembool last month,” she said suddenly, before sharply rapping a stack of notepads twice against the window to align the edges.

The Prime Minister paused in his counting to capture a pen that had rolled onto the floor. He tapped it briskly against his stack of speech cards to get the ink running. “Oh? Why didn’t you mention it earlier?”

“I meant to, but it fell by the wayside. I had just finished reading it when Oglinski arrived to deliver my usual scolding. You’d already been summoned by Nicholas to take a call from Ling Yao. Though perhaps it may have been Alphonse, or Falman; I can’t remember now, but it was definitely long-distance, and I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“I’ll forgive the late delivery, then. What’s the news from Dr. Rockbell?”

“Edward and Winry are still at odds over names for the new baby. Winry wants to have their choices made well in advance this time, so they don’t have another misunderstanding with the hospital. But you know what she’s up against when it comes to giving Edward Elric free reign—he apparently favors ‘Kassiopeia’ for a girl. She’s been fighting to get him to reconsider ‘Sara’ instead.”

The Prime Minister’s pen scratched against his speech cards. “She knows him too well,” he said quietly.

For the rest of the ride, Riza relayed more stories about the Elrics, their children, Dr. Rockbell’s patients, and their many sheep. Sheska was tempted to interrupt and ask more about how Edward was doing—it'd been many years since he surrendered his State Alchemist license, but she was still grateful to the young man who’d changed her life—but she found herself caught up in the spell of Riza’s voice. Riza hated small talk; the Prime Minister was the one who always had an anecdote at the ready and a charming story in reserve. Now, in a strange reversal of roles, he was the one listening intently as Riza chattered away.

“There you are,” she finished, loudly snapping the briefcase clasp with a flourish. “Memos at the front, briefs at the back, pens and ink in the right-side pocket. As always.”

The Prime Minister chuckled, but somehow it came out sounding rather sad. “What am I going to do without you?”

Riza took his reading glasses off his nose and folded them carefully before slipping them into his coat pocket. “Mend our rocky relationship with Creta, I should hope.”

“We’re here, sir,” Maria announced as the car pulled up beside the Central City Rail Station. To the radio, she reported the deliveries of Sandstorm, Sphinx, and Specs. The Mustangs opened their doors and exited. Sheska opened hers and went around to the back to fetch the cask of wine.

It took a lot of nerve to quietly offer, “‘Specs’ was my father’s nickname for me too.”

Maria was still gazing out at the street. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Sheska rolled the cask to the edge of the seat to better lift it, and dared to look at Maria’s eyes reflected in the rearview mirror. “He was the first person to notice that I was squinting too hard when I read. He made me feel like I was fancy and grown-up to wear glasses.” She tried a small smile. “‘Course they were just as dowdy as the PM’s, and twice as thick.”

“Heh.” Maria moved one hand to the gear shift. “Be careful on the steps, carrying that barrel. Can’t lose a good Amestrian vintage before they’ve even crossed the border.”

“Roger that,” Sheska nodded weakly, and joined the long line of porters headed towards the platform.

 

* * *

 

Sheska didn’t think there was anything noteworthy about a man getting onto a train, but the two dozen photographers who’d managed to worm their way to the platform clearly thought otherwise. All of them were firing away as the traveling staff boarded the express line to West City, angling their lenses around the elbows and shoulders of the line of guards. Sheska hung back in the shadows of Sam and Lou to shield herself from the flashes.

Nicholas ran through the items on his clipboard with the Prime Minister, performing their final check before boarding. “Your trunk is packed in your compartment, sir, as is the emergency kit and medical supplies. Your guards will be sleeping in the train car behind you, Harry and myself with the radio operators two down. If you should need anything at all, we’ll be right—”

“Thank you, Nicholas,” the Prime Minister waved him off. “If you would, go check on Harry, please? I’m still waiting on his speech for the stop in Metterdam and I’ve no idea what’s taking him so long to write about cherry tarts.”

Nicholas fluttered away, leaving the Mustangs, their guards, and Sheska. The conductor announced five minutes til departure. The photographers laid in wait. The Prime Minister set his reordered briefcase down on the platform.

“I’ll be back on the fifteenth, two weeks from today,” he said firmly, though everyone already knew. “I counted exactly four dogs before I left. I’d better find _only_ four when I return.”

Riza shrugged. “I can’t promise that.”

The photographers surged against the guards as she stepped forward, all of them yelling and squabbling with each other to get the best shot of the embrace. Mrs. Oglinski had laid down her rules for public embraces at nearly every appointment: hug first, then kiss. To hug, you wrapped your arms around their back and squeezed once, then released. To kiss, you held elbows or hands only, and it was the taller partner’s duty to lean down. A hug should never be clingy. A kiss should always be close-eyed and close-mouthed. Timing was of the essence, for drawing it out meant you were either desperate or possibly faking it, while embracing too quickly meant you were faking it for sure.

The Mustangs checked every box they were supposed to check. The Prime Minister straightened up, released Riza’s hands, and gave a small wave to the remaining staff before picking up his briefcase and boarding the train.

In spite of the conductor’s warning, though, the train remained stationary. How long was "five minutes" supposed to last? The morning fog was starting to feel more like a jungle mist, as the sun mercilessly burst through the clouds. The photographers packed their cameras back into their cases and began to disperse. Riza fanned herself with her hat, watching the hands of the station clock turn with a distrustful scowl on her face. Sheska—feeling her hair frizz up with each passing second—was seriously considering doing the same.

“Damn,” Riza muttered, before suddenly tossing her hat to the side. Sam fumbled to catch it before it fell. “Wait here.”

Sheska looked to Sam and Lou—neither seemed sure who the order was meant for. “Sorry, ma’am, did you mean me?” she asked, but Riza didn’t answer, Riza was already hurrying across the platform, already reaching up to knock on the window of the passenger car.

A face appeared on the other side of the glass. In a moment the sash was raised and the Prime Minister’s head poked out.

Whatever Riza said was swallowed by the din of the station, as a long wail announced the arrival of another train. The Prime Minister’s head ducked back inside, and then the Prime Minister himself came back out of the passenger car. He walked over to Riza, looking concerned. Sam and Lou looked much the same. They moved forward to join the two of them, regardless of the order to wait.

Sheska grabbed Lou’s sleeve, saying, “Hold on, he must’ve forgotten his speech cards again,” at the same moment that Riza seized the Prime Minister by the shoulders and pulled him into a second kiss. A kiss that could make the cover of a Sabine Stallion novel.

“O-or,” Sheska croaked, just barely managing to hold back an excited shout, “I guess he didn’t.”

The kiss was long enough that the few photographers who hadn’t left the platform could be heard shouting as they scrambled to get their gear back together to capture it. A handful of flashbulbs fired haphazardly just as Riza pulled back. Primly, she adjusted the Prime Minister’s collar and plucked out his pocket square to wipe her lipstick off his mouth. He didn’t seem to be able to do it himself; his hands were still on her waist. He looked like a moth caught in the spell of a lamp, jumping when the train whistle blasted twice.

“Stop mooning,” Riza ordered loudly, pushing him back towards the passenger car. “I’ll expect a call from West City tomorrow at exactly oh-nine-hundred hours.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the Prime Minister promised. He managed to land one last kiss on her cheek before the impatient conductor yanked the door shut between them.

Sam and Lou snapped to attention as the photographers began to flock around Riza again, quickly stepping in to keep them back. Sam handed back her hat; she held it tightly between her hands. She didn’t turn to watch the train move down the tracks, picking up speed.

“Was that Mrs. Oglinski’s idea?” Sheska finally dared to ask when they reached the station exit.

“No. She told me to avoid causing a scene at all costs, actually.” Riza smoothed back her hair with one hand before replacing her hat.

“You aren’t worried she might be mad, ma’am?”

“If she is, so be it. I heard rumors that Vivian might be hired by Major General Olivier Armstrong soon, to start grooming her for the Fuhrer’s seat.” Though her hat was in place, her clothes neat, and her mouth clean of the evidence of her recent etiquette transgression, the grin that crept over Riza’s face made her look like something wild. “I’ll have to find new ways to keep being the most difficult case.”

 

* * *

 

Sheska followed Riza back to the line of waiting black cars, now empty, but Riza stopped her at the curb.

“Staff always have Sundays off, Sheska,” she insisted. “I appreciate you coming to help send off the Cretan tour, but there’s no need to stay for the rest of the day.”

“I know, ma’am, but since I’m already here, I thought I could get started on—”

“No ‘buts.’ You’re going home.” Riza put her hands on her hips. “Frankly, I’m concerned about you. You don’t seem very good at balancing your work with your life outside of it.”

This was an awfully bold statement coming from a woman who'd turned her flat into an office building, but Sheska didn’t have enough courage to point that out. She could only stammer a weak attempt at persuasion as Riza took her elbow in a soldier’s grip and marched her to another car.

“Take my assistant home, please, Ross,” she ordered the driver. “And Sheska, some advice for the future…” After whispering one sentence into her ear, Riza maneuvered her quickly and expertly into the passenger’s seat, and swung the door shut behind her.

It was a very quiet ride back.

Sheska tried to face directly front again, but every time the car stalled at a traffic light she found her eyes drawn back to Maria’s profile. She had dark circles under her eyes—so did Sheska, thanks to last night’s gala—and the mole on her left cheekbone was peppered with new freckles, like the moon surrounded by stars. They drove past Central Command, circling around to the west side and passing the House of Parliament, before heading further into the lower valley, the streets of Sheska’s neighborhood rolling by in a blur of old flats and leafy trees.

They were a stone’s throw from her street when Sheska turned to Maria and blurted, “Go out with me.”

Maria’s hands twitched on the steering wheel; if she weren’t a good driver, they might have swerved.

“I—you— _what?”_ Her head turned left and then front, to Sheska and back, torn between her and the road.

“On a date,” Sheska clarified quickly. “Romantically. The two of us, uh, on a date that is romantic. Like going to dinner, or a park maybe, or whatever you want, really.” Realizing it sounded demanding, she amended, “Sorry, wow, that was rude, I meant will you go out on a date with me, please?”

They both lurched forward as Maria spotted a red light just in time and slammed the brakes.

“No, I—I know what you meant,” Maria said, ignoring the angry honks of the car behind them. “I just thought that you—” She gestured to her mouth. “That you were, um, spoken for.”

“No, no no no! No, I’m not spoken for at all, that was a terrible misunderstanding! The girl who kissed me doesn’t even like girls—wait, well, she maybe likes girls but she’s got a beau already, so she doesn’t have any interest in me, it was just to—no, Maria, listen.” Sheska wanted to grab her hand, but she didn’t want to obstruct the steering wheel, so she floundered and landed somewhere near Maria’s shoulder instead. “I’m not spoken for. I want _you.”_

It took a moment for the words to settle in, but when they did, Sheska found her cheeks were turning just as red as Maria’s.

“Okay, that was too much,” Sheska groaned. “I’m sorry. I’ve been reading Dana’s romance novels for months and I think they’ve melted my brain. I can’t think of how to do this unless it’s a dramatic love confession in a rainy castle, or something.”

To her relief, Maria laughed. “I could pull over,” she said. “There’s a fire escape you can climb if you want to break into soliloquies.”

Sheska smiled. “Can I carry you out of the Rollings Park pond?”

“Only if I’m wearing a nightdress covered in ruffles.”

“There’s a whole line of those books just about soldiers, so we should turn around and go swoon over the walls of Command.”

“Oooh, perfect, but I don’t know if my uniform still fits.”

“I think we should pull over.”

“I could probably get the trousers on, at least, but I don’t know if the jacket would—”

“Maria, we’re blocking the intersection. Pull over.”

Maria’s eyes went wide as she spotted the line of cars piled behind them. “Shit!”

She pulled up to the curb outside Sheska’s flat, and for a long moment they just sat there listening to the car engine cool down. The sun was bright now, finally clearing the fog away.

“Hey, Sheska,” Maria said quietly, “the next time the PM goes to Xing, I was wondering if you’d like to come with…”

The “me” was lost somewhere between her mouth and Sheska’s.

When they pulled apart, the temperature inside the car has risen significantly; Sheska was sure that her hair was beyond saving now. Maria undid the top button of her shirt collar and rubbed at her neck, sighing, and to Sheska it suddenly felt another ten degrees hotter.

“Um, I hate to do this, but I’m still on the clock,” Maria admitted, “and I don’t own this car. So as much as I’d like to keep—” her eyes fluttered shut as Sheska kissed her again, lightly, “—mm, keep this going, the PM’s face keeps popping up in my head, and he looks very disappointed in me for abusing taxpayer-funded transport. Unless we could explain that it was done in service of the nation.”

“It’s alright,” Sheska laughed. “Call me when your shift’s over. You don’t have to worry about getting told off by the PM, either; I’ll vouch for you, and the First Lady will vouch for me.”

Maria snorted. “No offense, Sheska, but I’ve worked with Major Hawkeye much longer than you have. I’m pretty sure she’d be the last person to defend two employees necking on company time.”

“No, she’s fine with it! She even gave me advice.”

Maria raised an eyebrow. “What kind of advice was that?”

“She said, ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’ And based on evidence I’ve gathered today—and over the last seven months—I’m pretty sure she seduced the Prime Minister back when he was still a brigadier general. Possibly even a colonel.” Sheska shrugged. “So I think she’s alright with me kissing you, so long as it doesn’t interfere with our work ethic.”

"She…no… When he was a _colonel?!_  No—mm—there's no way—mph—that I'd believe—Sheska are you trying to kiss me or cover the First Lady's fraternization breach, because that's not—mmmf—"

As she leaned in again, Sheska wished that she had a camera to capture the delighted look on Maria’s sweaty, red-cheeked, just-kissed face, but alas. She would just have to commit it to memory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are, at the end…of this episode of the West Wing…
> 
> For my final footnotes, let’s do a little literary digging! I’m sure many people made the connection from the title to the quote, “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” Often misattributed to a number of women ranging from Eleanor Roosevelt to Marilyn Monroe, the phrase has been forever used out-of-context to mean that only badass bitches bring about change. The quote is actually taken from an academic paper by historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who was referring to the fact that there are so many missing pieces of women’s history because ordinary, “well-behaved” women and their lives were ignored. Ulrich later wrote a book on her experience of watching her quote take on a life of its own.
> 
> I wouldn't be true 2 myself if I didn't link to [my own pinterest board for this fic,](https://pin.it/emj37ehde2yewk) because yes I am that big nerd who collects fashion refs for fanfic of a world that doesn't even REALLY have equivalent historical fashion. LET'S ALL JUST PRETEND THE 90S LOOK IN FMA ARE…NOT…
> 
> Another thank you for a million years to @Izilen, not only for inspiring this au and trading so many headcanons about it, but for reading through nearly every part of the chapters and giving me so much useful feedback. You're a hero, Izzy!! <33333
> 
> I am on both tumblr (@m-azing) and twitter (@ehmazing) if you'd like to say hi! or if you have literally any questions about this fic, leave 'em in the comments or send me a message on one of those platforms lol
> 
> Last but not least, +20 reader points if you found the coded message up there ;)


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